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JOHN MARSHALL 

AND OTHER ADDRESSES 



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THE ARGONAUT PUBLISHING COMPANY 

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA 






To My Friend, 

GENERAL THOMAS H. HUBBARD 

Soldier, Lawyer and Financier, 

I Dedicate This Book. 



I 



4^ TABLE OF CONTENTS 

^ PAGE 

s;^ John Marshall 7 

!5 Peace on Earth 33 

"Haec Olim Meminisse Juvabit" 37 

, The Light of the World 42 

A Christmas-New Year Talk 46 

The Star of Bethlehem 49 

"The Tempest'' 54 

"Illusions" 59 

Bohemia 65 

"Bohemia" 69 

California 73 

The Grape 78 

A Medical Address 81 

Chauncey M. Depew 91 

Steam and Electricity 95 

The Woman Victoria 100 

The First Rivet 105 

Poets and Poetry 108 

"The Man Behind the Gun" 114 

What Has Art Done for Civilization ? 118 

The Presidents of the United States 127 

American Imperialism 133 

Law and Commerce 145 

From Plymouth Rock to the Golden Gate 148 

Thomas Jefferson 156 

William Sproule 160 

Carnegie Libraries 163 

Southern Cooking 166 

An Easter Talk 168 

The University and the State 173 

The War with Spain 177 

Character 198 

Fourth of July Oration 214 

A Political Address 232 



PREFACE. 



Before the San Francisco fire of April, 1906, I had 
collected most of my addresses for the purpose of publish- 
ing them in one volume. This publication was not 
prompted by any sense of egotism or by any illusion that 
they would be extensively read. Lord Roseberry has said 
that people do not read old speeches, and there is much 
truth in this statement. My desire simply was to give 
them a local habitation. When this disastrous conflagra- 
tion destroyed all my possessions, including all my literary 
and professional work for the past twenty-five years, I 
felt as if every foot-print that I had made had been oblit- 
erated, and I immediately endeavored to collect as many 
as I could of my speeches, for the purpose of carrying 
out my original intention. Through the kindness of friends 
and libraries living and situate outside of San Francisco 
at the time of the fire, I have been able to obtain copies 
of a few of these speeches, and I republish them in this 
volume with the hope that, in event of another such fire, 
one copy of this work may escape destruction. 

Horace G. Platt. 

San Francisco, September 14, 1908. 



JOHN MARSHALL 

Chief Justice of the United States 



(Delivered Before the Oregon Bar Association at Portland, 
Oregon, John Marshall Day, February 4, 1901.) 



THE evil that men do is said to live after them, but the 
good is oft interred with their bones. There are, 
however, good men as well as bad men who "departing 
leave behind them footprints on the sands of time," whose 
good work knows neither death nor dying but lives on 
through the centuries. To the memory of such a man. Chief 
Justice Marshall, the bench and bar of this country are 
assembled to do honor and reverence on this the one hun- 
dredth anniversary of his elevation to the Supreme Bench. 

The close of a century is suggestive of retrospection, and 
invites us to revisit its dawning, as does the beginning of a 
century hurry us on the wings of anticipation to its close. 

The nineteenth century and the Republic were rocked in 
the same cradle. The two have grown up together, foster 
brothers, as it were, and they challenge comparison one with 
the other. The century began its travels on a stage coach; 
it ends them on limited trains that keep company with the 
sun as they speed across the continents. It began its corre- 
spondence with letters that lagged behind the snail ; it ends 
it with the telephone and telegraph that pace the lightning. 
It began with the nations whole wide worlds apart ; it ends 
with earth's remotest regions in neighborly communication, 
and all the world a whispering gallery. It began with little 



8 JOHN MARSHALL 

science, less machinery, and no surcease from pain; it ends 
with science dropping in ripe fruit from the tree of knowl- 
edge, machinery a wizard doing the work of magic, and 
pain lulled to sleep by the hypnotism of anaesthetics. 

Equally marvelous has been the development of this 
Republic, of its government, its resources, and its people. 

One hundred years ago thirteen sparsely settled States 
fringing the Atlantic constituted the United States of 
America. Its western boundary was the Mississippi, but its 
southern line did not extend to the Gulf of Mexico. Today 
the United States of America consists of forty-five States 
and four Territories, cemented by blood into a Union one 
and indivisible, containing a population of eighty millions, 
and extending from British Columbia to the Gulf of Mex- 
ico, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and including in addi- 
tion the arctic region of Alaska, the Hawaiian Islands, the 
Antilles, and the Philippines, those tropic isles of the East- 
ern and Western Seas, in all a great empire, second to none 
beneath the stars. 

One hundred years ago we were an agricultural people 
whose exports did not exceed $200,000 a year, and in 
importance we counted for little among the nations. Today 
we are an agricultural, a commercial, and a manufacturing 
people, our annual exports exceed one billion of dollars, 
and we stand with our back to the wall, with boundless 
resources and untiring energy, fighting single-handed the 
battle of prosperity against the world. 

One hundred years ago our country had just started upon 
its career as a nation. It was a beginner among those that 
had the experience of ages, it was rich only in possibilities. 
Today it has behind it the experience of the most wonderful 
century since time began, and has arrived at man's estate, 
rich beyond the dreams of its founders. Its people exceed 
in millions the civilized citizens or subjects of any rival 



c 

JOHN MARSHALL 9 

realm or region. Its coffers hold more gold than ever glit- 
tered in the opiate dreams of any Oriental lord, or than 
now is stored in any European or Asiatic treasury. Its 
schoolhouses, flag-surmounted, like blazing beacons, lead 
more children out of darkness into light than are rescued 
from ignorance in any other land. Within its borders more 
homes shelter those of the people who live by the labor of 
their hands than in any of the countries beyond the seas. 
The poverty of the old world grinds not its toilers. Its 
countless acres of waving grain and its snowy fields of 
cotton feed and clothe more peoples than its own. Its fac- 
tories threaten with idleness the artisans of the other nations. 
An American bridge spans the Nile, American locomotives 
with their cheery whistle break the stillness of Siberian 
wastes and Asiatic vastness, American dollars are replen- 
ishing the emptying coffers of Europe, and an American 
battle-ship is Queen of the Seas. 

One hundred years ago we had a government that was 
an experiment, based upon a written constitution not yet 
understood or interpreted. Today we have a government 
that has stood all the tests a hundred years could devise, a 
government proven to be of the people, by the people, and 
for the people, a tower of strength for struggling humanity 
from whose summit the torch of liberty lights the world, 
and it is based upon this same written constitution to which 
John Marshall gave its original interpretation, an interpre- 
tation that time has strengthened and circumstance affirmed, 
an interpretation that is as permanent as the constitution 
itself, an interpretation that was a masterly unfolding of 
the meaning of the constitution, that "found it paper, and 
made it power," and to which we are indebted for the pres- 
ent strength and stability of this government, the present 
national oneness of this heterogeneous collection of State 
sovereignties, and the consequent supremacy on the Amer- 



10 JOHN MARSHALL 

ican continent of the United States. Therefore to this 
great jurist more than to any other man since Washington 
do we stand indebted for the greatness and the glory that 
characterize the United States as the crowning achievement 
of the nineteenth century. 

There is no page in our country's history that the life of 
this great jurist would not adorn. There is no one of our 
country's builders who can claim more renown. It there- 
fore becomes us, and must interest and instruct us, to review 
the events of his historic life, to recall his virtues, recount 
his achievements, and renew the immortelles upon his grave. 
I therefore ask your attention while I briefly and reverently 
attempt his eulogy. 

John Marshall was born in Fauquier County, Virginia, 
in the year 1755. He had but little school education, and 
never attended college but for a short course in law. He 
served from 1775 to 1779 in the army of the Revolution, 
and endured the hardships of that terrible winter at Valley 
Forge. 

It was while he was there fighting for his country that 
he met Washington and Hamilton. It was amidst the 
sufferings and dangers of war that there began a lasting 
friendship and mutual admiration between these three 
remarkable men, who did so much to start this country 
aright and give an abiding form to its government. 

In 1780 Marshall was admitted to the bar after a not 
very extensive course of legal study. In 1782 he was 
elected to the Legislature of Virginia, and made a member 
of the Executive Council, though then only twenty-seven 
years old. Although he served several terms in the Legis- 
lature, he at the same time rose rapidly at the bar, and was 
employed in most of the important litigation before the 
Virginia Court of Appeals. His success can be understood 
from his style in argument, which may be best described 



JOHN MARSHALL 11 

in the words of William Wirt, who thus wrote of him: 
"Marshall spoke, as he always does, to the judgment merely, 
and for the simple purpose of convincing. His maxim 
seems always to have been to 'aim exclusively at strength.' " 

In 1788 he was elected a member of the Virginia con- 
vention called to consider the proposed Federal constitution. 
Virginia was the hotbed of those who were opposed to a 
closer union of the States, whereby it was sought to create 
a central government that in Federal matters would domi- 
nate the States. Patrick Henry was the eloquent spokesman 
of this party in this convention. 

Marshall believed that the two objects in forming a gov- 
ernment were safety for the people and energy in the admin- 
istration. He was sore distressed by the weakness of the 
existing Confederation, and its inefficiency to accomplish 
either of these objects. "H a system of government were 
devised by more than human intelligence," said he, "it would 
not be effectual if the means were not adequate to the 
power." 

Washington had strongly urged "an indissoluble Union 
of the States under one Federal head" as one of the four 
things essential to the well-being, to the existence of the 
United States as an independent nation, as one of the pillars 
on which the glorious fabric of our independence and 
national character must be supported." Marshall thor- 
oughly sympathized with his great chief in this regard. He 
agreed with Washington that it was a solecism in politics 
that we should confederate as a nation and yet be afraid 
to give the rulers of that nation sufficient power to order 
and direct it. He therefore strongly favored the establish- 
ment of a national government with power to accomplish 
national purposes, and he urged the ratification of the con- 
stitution. The majority of the people of his State were 
opposed to it. They preferred the supremacy of the States 



12 JOHN MARSHALL 

to the supremacy of the Union. He was warned by his 
friends that he would be defeated unless he came out against 
ratification, but he replied with the courage that ever char- 
acterized him that if elected he would be a determined 
advocate for its adoption. He was elected, and combated 
with matchless ability the eloquence of Patrick Henry. 

In 1795 he was again and against his wishes returned to 
the Legislature. In fact, on the day of his election, and 
after he himself had voted and had gone about his business, 
a poll was opened for him and without his knowledge he 
was elected. 

The administration of Washington was then almost over- 
whelmed by a wave of unpopularity. The French Min- 
ister was inciting the people against England. Popular 
feeling in favor of France was almost at a white heat. 
Washington's proclamation of neutrality in the war between 
France and England, and his treaty of commerce with Eng- 
land, called the Jay treaty, were strongly and bitterly con- 
demned in Legislatures, in the newspapers, and at public 
meetings. Marshall was personally popular in Virginia. 
He was admired for his ability and respected for his integ- 
rity. It would have been easy for him to go with the major- 
ity of his fellow-citizens. Warm friends urged him to take 
this course. But he was as distinguished for his courage 
as for his capacity. When his judgment had decided he 
knew no turning back. He, therefore, not only in the Legis- 
lature supported the President with all his energy and 
ability, but, after a mass meeting in Richmond, presided 
over by Chancellor Wythe, had denounced the Jay treaty 
as insulting to the dignity, dangerous to the security, and 
repugnant to the constitution of the United States, he called 
a public meeting of the citizens, and succeeded in having 
resolutions carried approving the conduct of the adminis- 
tration, and admitting that it was acting within its consti- 



JOHN MARSHALL 13 

tutional rights. Some one has well said of this event, ''With 
rare courage at a public meeting at Richmond he defended 
the wisdom and policy of the administration, and his argu- 
ment as to its constitutionality anticipated the judgment 
of the world." 

For this course he was denounced as an aristocrat and 
as an enemy of a republican form of government. But 
these denunciations could not disturb his composure, nor 
prevent the growth of his reputation as a constitutional 
lawyer. 

His speech in the Legislature that the constitutional pro- 
vision giving to Congress the right to regulate commerce 
did not take from the executive the power, with the advice 
of the Senate, to negotiate and conclude a treaty of com- 
merce, not only won him national fame, but settled this 
much disputed constitutional question for all time. 

Soon thereafter Washington offered him the Attorney- 
Generalship and also the French Mission, both of which he 
declined, though he did subsequently go with Pinckney and 
Gerry to France as a Commissioner to settle the strained 
relations, verging on hostility, then existing between the 
two countries. 

This mission resulted in nothing except to increase Mar- 
shall's fame by reason of his very able and dignified corre- 
spondence with Talleyrand, which, in the opinion of Patrick 
Henry, raised the American public in their own esteem. 

In 1799, at the earnest solicitation of Washington, unwill- 
ingly but unselfishly and loyally, and in the face of an 
almost certain defeat, he again breasted the waves of popu- 
lar disapproval, and entered the race for Congress. His 
election was a triumph won only by great courage, backed 
by his rapidly growing -reputation. Although a new mem- 
ber, he immediately took rank as one of the leaders upon 
all constitutional questions, and in the matter of the sur- 



14 JOHN MARSHALL 

render of Jonathan Robbins by the President to England 
upon a charge of murder committed upon a British man- 
of-war, he delivered an argument that drew the line between 
the executive and judiciary departments so clearly as to 
have the effect of a judicial construction of the constitution, 
an argument so profound, so complete, so convincing that, 
though not delivered in court, it has been considered worthy 
of preservation in the Reports of the Supreme Court. Free 
from any effort at rhetoric, oratory, or display, it reads like 
a judicial opinion, calm, intellectual, decisive of the point 
in dispute. In this instance Marshall again displayed 
that courage that always supported him when a constitu- 
tional question arose, the proper construction of which was 
the unpopular one. 

It must be borne in mind that the American people at 
that time were but little used to governmental restraint, 
and were less disposed towards any action of the Federal 
Government that did not harmonize with the passions and 
prejudices of the hour. Washington's proclamation of neu- 
trality and the Jay treaty were unpopular because the people 
were in sympathy with France, and because they preferred 
that Congress should have the sole power to take such steps. 
Adams's surrender of Jonathan Robbins was unpopular 
because it was a compliance with a demand from England, 
and the people thought that the courts had the sole power to 
settle such a question. But in all of these matters Marshall 
considered neither popular approval nor disapproval, and 
his wonderful analytical mind, his intuitive perception of 
the true meaning of the constitution, his impartial mental 
temperament, enabled him to so correctly mark out the 
jurisdictions of the three departments of the government 
as prescribed in the constitution that his opponents, m the 
words of Gallatin, who had been selected to reply to him 



JOHN MARSHALL 15 

in the Robbins matter, pronounced his arguments unan- 
swerable. 

Before his term as Congressman was finished Adams 
offered him a Supreme Court Judgeship, which he declined, 
and then appointed him successively Secretary of War and 
Secretary of State. The latter office he filled until January 
31, 1801, when he was appointed Chief Justice, taking his 
seat on February 4 of the same year. 

He was then forty-six years of age. What a contrast his 
career then beginning was to be to that of his great French 
contemporary, Napoleon Bonaparte, who, a few years later, 
when also forty-six years of age, finished a career that like 
a meteor had dazzled the world both by the empyrean height 
its starry course pursued and by the brilliancy of its light, 
that destroyed all it illumined! 

One hundred years ago these two men were leaders of 
the two peoples that were then attracting the attention of 
the world by their struggles for the rights of man. One 
sought his own glory, the other only the people's good. One 
fell from the throne he had erected upon the liberty of his 
country at the age when the other took his seat as Chief 
Justice of the highest court of his land, where for over a 
third of a century he guarded the people's government from 
the assaults of its enemies. 

When the recording angel shall call the roll of the great 
men of the ages, those men whose minds shone with the 
light of genius and whose lives glowed with the Prome- 
thean fire, not to the one who sought to scale the stars 
upon a pyramid of crushed humanity, but to the one who 
helped humanity itself to reach the stars will come the glad 
tidings, "Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou 
into the joy of thy Lord." 

John Quincy Adams said that if his father had done 
nothing else to deserve the approbation of his country and 



16 JOHN MARSHALL 

posterity, he might proudly claim it for the single act of 
making John Marshall Chief Justice; and posterity 
exclaims, "Amen." 

William Pinckney said that "He was born to be Chief 
Justice of any country into which Providence should have 
cast him," and every lawyer of the land echoes this state- 
ment. 

Bryce, in his "American Commonwealth," has truly said 
that he was so singularly fitted for the office of Chief Jus- 
tice, and rendered such incomparable services in it, that 
the Americans have been wont to regard him as a special 
gift of favoring Providence. 

Story said of him: "He was a great man, he would 
have been deemed a great man in any age, and of all ages, 
he was one of those to whom centuries alone give birth, 
standing out like beacon lights on the loftiest eminences 
to guide, admonish, and instruct future generations as well 
as the present." 

When Marshall became Chief Justice practically nothing 
had been done by the courts in construing the constitution. 
There had been but two decisions by the Supreme Court 
upon constitutional questions. During his incumbency of 
thirty-four years there were fifty-one such decisions ren- 
dered by this court, in thirty-four of which he wrote the 
opinions, and in all but one of which his was the controlling 
mind. In but one of these he was overruled, the case of 
Ogden vs. Saunders, wherein he wrote a dissenting opinion 
against the power of the States to pass bankruptcy laws. 

The originality of his decisions may be best understood 
by bearing in mind that a written constitution, created by 
the people and capable of being altered or repealed only 
by the people, controlling and not controlled by the Legis- 
lature, was at that time a new thing in the science of gov- 
ernment. The bench and bar of that day had known only 



JOHN MARSHALL 17 

the English constitution, which Parliament could change 
at will. They were now called upon to construe a written 
constitution, from which the Executive, Legislative, and 
Judiciary departments alike derived their powers, and which 
measured out as it created all their rights. This charter 
was like an unexplored country, unmapped, unsurveyed, 
undeveloped. 

The prevailing tendency of that revolutionary period was 
to make the Legislative Department supreme. The oppos- 
ing tendency, as voiced by such creative men as Hamilton, 
was to strengthen the Executive Department against the 
encroachments of the Legislature. Such a situation was, 
in the language of Senator Daniel, of Virginia, without a 
precedent in history, and has no parallel. The occasion 
demanded a judge who could, without fear and without 
reproach, construe this instrument, blaze out the paths 
each department must tread, and measure out the power 
each must exercise. This judge had no precedents to fol- 
low. His only guide was the letter of the law, his only 
inspiration its spirit, his only resource great wisdom 
unclouded by passion or prejudice. 

Marshall was such a man. He did not need precedents. 
His mind seemed sufficient unto itself. The meaning lay 
to him in things themselves, and not in what others said 
about them. Therefore his opinions are almost free from 
the citation of authorities, from quotations or illustrations. 
As the artist can see the perfect image within the block of 
unhewn marble, so Marshall could see the meaning of the 
constitution in the unexplained writing. 

Said Justice Story : "When I examine a question, I go 
from headland to headland, from case to case; Marshall 
had a compass, put to sea, and went directly to his result." 

He excelled in the power of stating a case so clearly that 
his statements were arguments. He possessed a marvelous 



18 JOHN MARSHALL 

grasp of principle, a power of logical reasoning that 
amounted to mathematical demonstration, a miraculous 
insight that went straight to the ultimate fact, and a courage 
that allowed no interference with the pursuit of truth. In 
his development of the law as he understood it, and he 
instinctively knew what the law was, he recognized neither 
rank nor power, neither rich nor poor, neither favor nor 
disfavor, neither Republican nor Federalist, and, as has 
been well said, "he taught angry Presidents and partisan 
Legislatures to bow to the majesty of the law." 

Of him the Charleston Bar said: "His fame has justified 
the wisdom of the constitution, and reconciled the jealousy 
of freedom to the independence of the judiciary." 

His greatest work was in judicially defining the jurisdic- 
tion of the three Departments of Government as prescribed 
in the constitution. He had mapped out his course in this 
regard in his arguments in the Legislature, at public meet- 
ings, and in Congress. Upon the bench he clothed these 
arguments with judicial authority, and in Marbury vs. Mad- 
ison he did this with remarkable force and effect. His 
opinion in this case may be deemed to be as great a docu- 
ment as the Bill of Rights, as far-reaching as the Declara- 
tion of Independence, as essential to the healthy develop- 
ment of our government under the constitution as the 
constitution itself, as one of the great bulwarks of govern- 
ment under law against personal or popular government, 
as a searchlight casting its rays from the dome of the 
Temple of Justice upon the government, and, like the mod- 
ern X-ray, disclosing the orderly arrangement, the distinct 
and separate existence, and the prescribed duties of all its 
parts, and the pre-eminence of the constitution over all. 
In this opinion Marshall, with infinite tact, but with the 
clearness of the noonday sun, disclosed not only the path 
along which Presidential authority may travel without let 



JOHN MARSHALL 19 

or hindrance, except that of conscience and its own discre- 
tion, but also the path along which the Presidential steps 
are controlled by law as rigidly as those of the humblest 
official. In this opinion he revealed to the world how surely 
and securely the law protects the rights of the citizens. In 
this opinion he judicially proclaimed the supremacy of law 
over President, Congress, and the Supreme Court. In this 
opinion there was first announced to the world the doctrine 
that the judiciary could declare void a law enacted by 
Congress and approved by the President if it contravened 
the constitution. Without this power in the Supreme Court 
the Republic must have foundered on the rocks of execu- 
tive usurpation or the shoals of legislative tyranny. 

It is impracticable to enumerate the many great consti- 
tutional questions that came before him for settlement, and 
that he settled for all time, but it may be interesting to 
note a few as illustrative of the importance of his labors 
in strengthening the government, and in protecting the 
rights of the individual. 

One of the most valuable safeguards to the rights of the 
individual is the constitutional provision prohibiting a State 
from passing any law impairing the obligation of a contract. 
The wisdom of placing in the constitution this restraint 
upon the States will never cease to be a matter of congratu- 
lation to all the people. But at the time of the formation 
of the Union and thereafter the States claimed to be omnipo- 
tent in local matters, to be free to enact any legislation 
thereon, and recognized no power in the Federal govern- 
ment to annul their laws. 

In a case arising out of a Georgia statute Marshall had 
the first opportunity to construe this provision, and he held 
therein that a State law granting lands was a contract, that 
a subsequent law rescinding this grant impaired the obliga- 
tion of this contract, and was therefore in contravention of 



20 JOHN MARSHALL 

the constitution and void, and that the Supreme Court had 
the power to declare State laws as well as Federal laws 
void w^hen they contravened the Federal constitution. 

This same ruling was followed by him in the celebrated 
Dartmouth College case, wherein he held that a charter of a 
corporation was a contract which a State could not impair. 
His opinion in this case is admitted to be the most thorough 
and elaborate exposition of the constitutional sanctity of 
contracts to be found in the books. This decision, said 
Chancellor Kent, "did more than any other single act pro- 
ceeding from the authority of the United States to throw 
an impregnable barrier around all rights and franchises 
derived from the government, and to give solidity and 
inviolability to the literary, charitable, religious, and com- 
mercial institutions of the country." 

Owing to this decision all State constitutions now provide 
that all corporation charters are taken subject to the right 
of the State to alter or repeal them. 

The States were made very jealous of their sovereign 
rights by these decisions, but these were not all. There must 
be some final arbiter as to the meaning of the constitution, 
and Marshall held that the Federal Supreme Court must 
be this arbiter, that the constitution has provided this 
tribunal for the final construction of itself, and the laws and 
treaties made thereunder, and that this power can not be 
exercised in the last resort by the courts of every State of 
the nation. He therefore held that the Supreme Court 
could set aside the judgment of a State court in cases 
involving a construction of the constitution of the United 
States or the laws of Congress, and that State Legislatures 
can not determine the jurisdiction of the courts of the 
Union or annul their judgments or destroy rights acquired 
thereunder. 



JOHN MARSHALL 21 

In one case that came before the Chief Justice the Fed- 
eral government and a State government were squarely 
arraigned against each other. The State of Maryland 
claimed the right to tax the Bank of the United States 
doing business within its borders. The Federal government 
denied this right on the part of the State, whereupon the 
State denied the constitutional right of the Federal govern- 
ment to charter a bank. Here was a clash of sovereign- 
ties. The constitution was apparently silent upon both ques- 
tions. Marshall held in a masterly opinion that the creation 
of the bank was a constitutional exercise of the powers of 
the general government, and that State legislation taxing 
the bank was contrary to the constitution; that it was an 
invasion of Federal sovereignty, which must be supreme 
where it exists at all. 

The last of his constitutional decisions which I shall 
notice was of such far-reaching consequence that without it 
the Union must have fallen apart. The State of New York 
had granted to certain parties an exclusive right to navigate 
all the waters of the State by vessels moved by steam. This 
grant had been sustained by all the State courts, even by 
so great a jurist as Chancellor Kent. The Chief Justice 
perceived that the assertion of this right, on the part of a 
State, struck right at the power conferred by the constitu- 
tion on Congress to regulate commerce with foreign nations 
or among the several States, and was in conflict with the 
Acts of Congress which authorized vessels employed in the 
coasting trade to navigate the waters of every State, and 
he held the grant was repugnant to the constitution and 
void. 

Suppose the decision of Chancellor Kent had been 
affirmed ! There would have been a barrier at the mouth 
of every river, and commerce would have been so crippled 
as to destroy the Union. 



22 JOHN MARSHALL 

Chancellor Kent was a great lawyer, his opinions were of 
high authority. They were backed by the public opinion 
of the States as well as by his great reputation. But Mar- 
shall was more far-seeing than Kent. Though he appre- 
ciated the great weight of the opinion of those who main- 
tained this alleged right of the States, he did not allow this 
to affect that independence of judgment that ever distin- 
guished him. He said: "It is supported by great names — 
by names which have all the titles to consideration that 
virtue, intelligence, and office can bestow. No tribunal can 
approach the decision of this question without feeling a 
just and real respect for that opinion which is sustained 
by such authority; but it is the province of this court, 
while it respects, not to bow to it implicitly ; and the judges 
must exercise, in the examination of the subject, that under- 
standing which Providence has bestowed upon them, with 
that independence which the people of the United States 
expect from this Department of Government." 

These questions so decided by Marshall now appear too 
simple to be disputed. But this idea arises from the fact 
that the present generation has grown up to look upon them 
as self-evident constructions of the constitution. 

In Marshall's day, however, they involved the existence 
of the Union as a strong, independent, self-protecting, effi- 
cient government, and they aroused in their settlement all 
the learning, eloquence, and industry of such lawyers as 
Wirt, Webster, Pinckney, Luther Martin, and others as able. 

Marshall, it is true, was a Federalist, but not in the sense 
that Hamilton was. He was not a liberal constructionist, 
as was Hamilton, nor was he a strict constructionist, as was 
Jefferson. He believed that the constitution must be care- 
fully examined to ascertain if any particular power was 
therein given, that upon him who asserted the existence of 



JOHN MARSHALL 23 

the power rested the burden of proof, but that if such power 
was established the constitution gave all those incidental 
powers which are necessary to its complete and efficient 
execution. 

With great wisdom, with great common sense, he found 
the constitutional provision that Congress may make all laws 
which shall be necessary or proper for carrying into execu- 
tion the powers vested in the Government of the United 
States, a cornucopia from which could be poured whatever 
was needed to effectuate a constitutional power. "Let the 
end be legitimate," said he; "let it be within the scope of 
the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which 
are not prohibited, but consistent with the letter and spirit 
of the constitution, are constitutional." Thereby he made 
the constitution an instrument that did not, like a strait- 
jacket, dwarf a growing, enterprising, expanding people, 
but that has grown with the people, and always along the 
lines of its original design. 

Realizing that the constitution was the sheet anchor of 
the government, that like the government it was "framed 
for ages to come and was designed to approach immortality 
as nearly as human institutions can approach it," he based 
his constructions upon a patriotism so broad, a logic so 
inexorable, a wisdom so profound, and a prescience so far- 
reaching that they remain today our mainstay and our guide, 
as applicable as when rendered, and give promise to our 
hopes of their anticipated immortality. 

We do not say that without Marshall the Union would 
certainly have been dissolved by the centrifugal forces that 
fought for what they called the rights of the States, but 
we do say that Marshall's decisions accomplished the pur- 
pose expressed in the opening lines of the constitution, to 
wit, "The formation of a more perfect union," and that 
at that formative period of our Government he was equal 



24 JOHN MARSHALL 

to his great opportunity to bring about a more perfect union 
of the States. 

"The people made the constitution, and the people can 
unmake it," said he. "It is the creature of their own will, 
and lives only by their will. But this supreme and irre- 
sistible power to make or unmake resides only in the body 
of the people, not in any subdivision of them. The attempt 
of any of the parts to exercise it is usurpation, and ought 
to be repelled by those to whom the people have delegated 
the power of repelling it." This doctrine was the cen- 
tripetal force that welded the many parts called States 
into the homogeneous whole called the Union; this was 
the doctrine that made the Federal government supreme 
and independent in all matters delegated to it by the con- 
stitution, without which independence from State interfer- 
ence there could not have been the more perfect Union 
designed by the fathers. 

The especial characteristic of Marshall to which I desire 
to call attention, apart from his great wisdom, was his great 
courage. Many judges are learned and able. Most judges 
are honest. Not so many have the courage of their convic- 
tions. Many are intimidated by the necessity of courting 
popular favor because of their need of popular approval 
when they seek re-election. Some seek popular approval and 
mistake the reputation of the moment for the fame that 
comes hereafter and goes not away. Not all appreciate the 
words of Mansfield, who said, while trying the case of Rex 
vs. Wilkes: 'T wish popularity, but it is that popularity 
which follows, not that which is run after. It is that 
popularity which sooner or later never fails to do justice to 
the pursuit of noble ends by noble means. I will not do 
that which my conscience tells me is wrong upon this occa- 
sion to gain the huzzas of thousands or the daily praise 
of all the papers which come from the press. I will not 



JOHN MARSHALL 25 

avoid what I think is right though it should draw on me 
the whole artillery of libels, all that falsehood and malice 
can invent or the credulity of a deluded populace can 
swallow." 

Marshal was such a man and such a judge. I have shown 
that he was such a man before he became Chief Justice. As 
Chief Justice he was equally so. 

In the Burr trial there was much to influence a weak 
judge. Burr's hands were red with the blood of Hamilton, 
whom Marshall had loved and respected and whose death 
he felt was a great loss to the country. The President 
desired and did all that he decently could to secure a con- 
viction. The people believed Burr guilty and demanded 
his life. So strong was this feeling on the part both of the 
Administration and the public that upon Burr's release the 
United States Attorney exclaimed: "Marshall has stepped 
in between Burr and death." The President did not hesi- 
tate to intimate that his acquittal was due to Marshall's 
Federalist inclinations, and the mob burned the Chief Jus- 
tice in effigy. 

But neither the calumnies that the present voiced or that 
could be expected of the future deterred Marshall from 
deciding as the law prescribed. Said he to the jury, in 
reference to the public clamor : "That this court dares 
not usurp power is most true. That this court dares not 
shrink from its duty is not less true. No man is desirous 
of becoming the peculiar subject of calumny. No man, 
might he let the bitter cup pass from him without self- 
reproach, would drain it to the bottom. But if he have no 
choice in the case, if there be no alternative presented to 
him but a dereliction of duty or the opprobrium of those 
who are denominated the world, he merits the contempt 
as well as the indignation of his country who can hesitate 
which to embrace." 



26 JOHN MARSHALL 

On another occasion he said: "In the argument we have 
been admonished of the jealousy with which the States of 
the Union view a revising power intrusted by the consti- 
tution and laws of the United States to this tribunal. To 
observations of this character the answer uniformly given 
has been that the course of the Judicial Department is 
marked out by law. We must tread the direct and narrow 
path prescribed for us. As this court has never grasped 
at ungranted jurisdiction, so will it never, we trust, shrink 
from the exercise of that which is conferred upon us." 

Marshall's conscientious appreciation of judicial duty 
was nowhere more apparent than in the matter of the issuing 
of a subpoena to President Jefferson in the Burr trial. After 
laying as his foundation the statement that "In the pro- 
vision of the constitution and of the statute which give to 
the accused a right to the compulsory process of the court, 
there is no exception whatever," he said: "It can not be 
denied that to issue a subpoena to a person filling the exalted 
station of Chief Magistrate is a duty which would be dis- 
pensed with much more cheerfully than it would be per- 
formed! But if it be a duty the court can have no choice 
in the case," and he issued the subpoena, adding the state- 
ment that "whatever difference may exist with respect to 
the power to compel the same obedience to the process as 
if it had been directed to a private citizen, there exists no 
difference with respect to the right to obtain it." 

"The Judicial Department," said he, near the close of his 
life, in the Virginia Constitutional Convention, "comes 
home in its effects to every man's fireside; it passes on his 
property, his reputation, his life, his all. Is it not to the 
last degree important that the judge should be rendered 
perfectly and completely independent, with nothing to con- 
trol him but God and his conscience? I have always 
thought, from my earliest youth till now, that the greatest 



JOHN MARSHALL 27 

scourge an angry heaven ever inflicted upon an ungrateful 
and a sinning people was an ignorant, a corrupt, or a 
dependent judiciary." 

In these days M^hen the press can by daily abuse and 
crimination prevent the re-election of judges whose deci- 
sions have been honestly rendered, when aggregated capital 
or aggregated labor can secure the defeat of a judge who 
has neither usurped power nor shrunk from his duty, but 
has simply taken the course marked out by law, it is small 
wonder that an elected judiciary is not always independent, 
without fear and without reproach. To our endless glory 
and good fortune, Marshall was independent of official 
favor or popular prejudice or journalistic lampooning. We 
believe, however, that none of these would have affected 
his decisions even had Jefferson had the power of removing 
him, or had the voters had the opportunity of defeating him 
at the polls. 

We believe that during the century just opening, with 
the fever of concentration burning in the veins of both 
capital and labor, the former desiring to accumulate dollars 
and the latter desiring to share them, with the labor trust 
controlling the votes and the industrial trusts controlling the 
dollars, the need of an independent judiciary will become 
more and more a pressing necessity. On both sides there 
is right. On each side there is often wrong. Each should 
have equal justice. But this even-handed justice must come 
from an independent judiciary, and this independence can 
be secured only by a life or a long tenure of office and by 
ample compensation. 

It has been said by an orator, in speaking of Marshall, 
that the test of greatness is great ability coupled with great 
opportunity greatly employed. This country will always 
produce men of great ability and it will always furnish 



28 JOHN MARSHALL 

great opportunities. These, to be greatly employed upon 
the bench, must be coupled with great independence. 

Marshall as an individual was simple in habits, kind in 
disposition, dignified in deportment, courteous and consid- 
erate towards others, and in thought, in speech, and in con- 
duct ever chivalrous towards women. Of his parents he 
always spoke with great reverence and filial piety, and for 
his wife he had a love that grew stronger with the years. 
If it be true that man's ruling passion manifests itself at 
death, then love of wife and parents was his ruling passion, 
for a few days before his death he wrote the following 
simple inscription for his tomb: 

"John Marshall, son of Thomas and Mary Mar 
shall, was born on the 24th day of September, 1755 ; 
intermarried with Mary Ambler the 3d of January, 
1783; departed this Hfe. . . .day of , 18. ." 

Jefferson also wrote his own epitaph, but it was of a dif- 
ferent kind. This great Virginian wrote the following: 
"Author of the Declaration of Independence, of the Statute 
of Virginia for religious freedom, and founder of the Uni- 
versity of Virginia." Marshall could justly have written 
as his epitaph, instead of the above simple little statement, 
the words: "If you would see my monument, behold your 
constitution," for he has been well called the second maker 
of the constitution, its great expounder, the father of con- 
stitutional law. 

His opponents would have made the constitution a rope 
of sand. His decisions made it a band of steel that not 
even a civil war could break asunder. 

Under him, in the words of a distinguished foreigner, 
the Supreme Court became the living voice of the consti- 
tution, the conscience of the people, the guarantee of the 
minority. 



JOHN MARSHALL 29 

Upon the death of Washington his was the voice to 
utter of him on the floor of Congress those memorable 
words, "First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of 
his countrymen." The American people will ever associate 
Marshall with Washington in sacred and grateful memory. 
He was ever the able and fearless defender of Washington, 
and as Chief Justice took up the work where the first Presi- 
dent laid it down, and carried it on in the spirit of him who 
began it. It was therefore most fit that he should have 
been the first chairman of the committee appointed to erect 
a monument to Washington. The shaft erected by this 
committee in its simplicity and height well portrays the 
character of Washington. But the real monument of both 
Washington and Marshall, more imperishable than brass 
or sculptured marble, is this constitutional government that 
has stood the strain of a civil war, the greater strain of 
accumulated wealth and vast territorial expansion, and 
which starts the new century with great burdens, new respon- 
sibilities, and unlimited temptations, and with the promise 
of another century's growth along the lines so clearly 
marked out by John Marshall, 

We can well attribute to him the credit of building for 
all time. Though the number of States has increased from 
thirteen to forty-five, and our territory has expanded from 
the Mississippi to the Pacific, and thence northerly to the 
land that is lit by the Aurora Borealis, and southerly and 
westerly to the islands of the tropic seas in whose midnight 
skies glitters resplendent in starry outline God's symbol of 
hope, the Southern Cross, expansion has not weakened the 
influence of the Federal government in the remotest States 
nor lessened their loyalty to the Union. Though a network 
of railroads intersects the land in all directions, like living 
veins pulsating with the hot blood of competition, almost 
obliterating State lines, and though commercial corporations 



30 JOHN MARSHALL 

and labor unions ramify the country irrespective of political 
divisions, we are still tenacious of our State sovereignties. 
Though we have wars beyond the seas, and foreign compli- 
cations are increasing as our foreign trade grows larger, 
and innumerable new problems in politics and economics 
are daily arising from our rapid internal and external 
growth, we are still loyal to our traditions, undismayed by 
the difficulties of the present, hopeful of the future, and 
above all still wedded to the constitution as Marshall con- 
strued it, and time but the impression stronger makes as 
streams their channels deeper wear. 

We gratefully appreciate his breathing into this consti- 
tution the breath of a vigorous life, his developing this 
constitution along such lines of healthy growth that each 
member of our Union has been individually stimulated, yet 
kept in harmony with the others and in subjection to all, 
whereby there has been produced a constitutional govern- 
ment under which any number of States and Territories 
can live, each in distinct existence but as a united whole, 
as diverse as the waves and yet as united as the sea, capable 
of any expansion, impossible of disruption, powerful because 
of the individuality of its parts and the solidity of its 
harmonious whole. 

Therefore, today, all over this land, in the capital of 
the Old Dominion where his labors began, at the capital 
of the nation where his labors ended, in Philadelphia where 
hangs old Liberty Bell that was rent in tolling his funeral 
knell, in all the marts of commerce that border the Atlantic, 
in the cities of the Great Lakes where throbs the nation's 
heart, along the wide rolling Mississippi hastening to the 
sea, at the city of the Golden Gate where the Occident 
meets the Orient in a sunset greeting, and here in this 
metropolis of the north, we do reverence to him as one of 
the greatest Americans. 



JOHN MARSHALL 31 

Therefore, today, in every court in the land lawyers 
suspend their labors and litigants halt in their contentions 
to listen only to the voice of his eulogist, while Justice 
opens her eyes to behold the glory of her most illustrious 
ministrant. 

Gentlemen of the bench and bar, the fame of lawyers, 
however learned and eloquent they may be, is ephemeral. 
The reputation of judges is but little less evanescent. Their 
glory is in laws honestly administered, in justice impartially 
awarded. To the soldier and to the statesman is it more fre- 
quently given to pitch his tent on Fame's eternal camping 
ground, to be honored with a niche in the Pantheon of the 
great. Few even of these inscribe their names so high that 
they are not obscured by the accumulated dust of a century. 
Ihe legal profession can therefore take pride in the fact 
that of all the gerat and good men gone, of the immortal 
few who were not born to die, none stands today higher in 
the respect and reverence of the American people than that 
able lawyer and matchless judge, John Marshall, the great 
Chief Justice. His renown is the richest inheritance of the 
American Bar. Above all the high places where the judges 
sit his name should be written in letters of gold where the 
sunlight may illumine and the dust not obscure, to ever 
encourage the judge to be brave and the lawyer to be true. 

Early yesterday morning, as my train followed a narrow 
stream, winding its way to the valley through a mountain 
defile, where the pine trees had a silvery sheen in their 
garments of snow, suddenly there loomed up before me a 
peak o'ertopping all the rest, its snowy crest bright with 
sunshine. It reminded me of Chief Justice Marshall. The 
stream was the Republic, winding its then narrow way 
towards its present broad expanse, and high up on the lofty 
pinnacle of the Supreme Bench, towering above all, was 
the venerable Chief Justice — his white hairs illumined by 



32 JOHN MARSHALL 

the sunlight of genius — a tall man, sun-crowned — like that 
peak, catching the first rays of the morning sun, to hold 
them as a lamp to guide his countrymen out of darkness 
into light. 

With this I close my humble tribute to the memory of 
Chief Justice Marshall. This is the immortelle that in your 
name I place upon his tomb. In honoring him we have 
honored ourselves. 

May the constitution as he construed it continue to be 
for another century our pillar of cloud by day and pillar 
of fire by night, so that when another hundred years has 
gone by, this people, still under this constitution, may again 
take pleasure and pride in gratefully honoring the name 
of John Marshall. 



PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD WILL TOWARDS MEN 



(Delivered at the Christmas High Jinks of the Bohemian Club, 
December 30, 1893.) 



THROUGHOUT the world, in every clime, in the 
Tropics where the devout read in the Southern Cross 
God's star-writ message of hope, in the frozen North where 
in the Aurora Borealis the religious behold the prismatic 
sheen of the Almighty's throne, in the East and West 
where holy men see in the rainbow the sun-illumined arch 
that supports the heaven of their belief, in lofty cathedrals 
lit by the soft light that streams through stain-glass win- 
dows, memorials to the wealth of the dead, and in humble 
chapels whose bare walls and uncushioned seats bespeak 
the poverty of the living, on Christmas morning. Anno 
Domini, 1893, priests in costly chasubles and preachers in 
threadbare coats, and surpliced choirs and choirs unsur- 
pliced, accompanied by the music of organs grand and 
melodeons poor, raised their voices and sang "On earth 
peace, good will toward men." 

Was this a hollow mockery? Were the report of the 
assassin's pistol, the bursting of the fanatic's bomb, and 
the cannon's roar, the mocking echoes of this sacred song? 
Do men sincerely wish for peace on earth? 

In Brazil Peixotto and Mello, boasting that they fight for 
their fellow countrymen, destroy their fellow countrymen 
and the work of their hands. In another land Spaniard 
and Moor revive in slaughter their ancient hatred. In 
Africa the white man civilizes the negro by destroying 



34 PEACE ON EARTH, 

him, and French and English bullets send the savage black 
to the gods of his idolatry. On the continent of Europe 
neighboring nations vie with one another in displays of 
military force, and assemble large armies to go through 
the pantomime of war. France goes into a delirium of joy 
over the Russian visit, and rejoices in anticipation of bloody 
victories won by the Cossack and Gaul over the German 
and Italian. In St. Petersburg and in Honolulu, in the 
land of almost endless snows, and in the land of the myrtle 
and the rose, armed sentries keep watchful guard. The 
God of War keeps Vulcan busy forging thunderbolts, and 
makes the heavens above, the earth beneath, and the waters 
under the earth aid him in the work of death. 

Does all this promise peace and good will? 

While the priests chant, do not eighteen million soldiers 
stand ready with spear and gun and shot and shell to prove 
the chant a lie, and can not on every sea swift-sailing 
Olympias be found — floating leviathans of destruction? 

While the cathedrals ring with this glorious anthem, does 
not the assassin steal into the home of the great and lay 
the master low, or with his death-laden bomb convert the 
church or court, the theater or legislative hall into a charnel 
house, the explosion startling the world like an alarm of 
fire at midnight? 

Do the starving and the freezing poor fighting for 
crumbs in the corridors of Chicago's city hall join in this 
hallelujah of good will? 

Is the daily newspaper, with its crest an open closet 
disclosing a skeleton, with its large-lettered announcements 
of anarchy, riot, murder, and assassination, with its columns 
of disgusting details of social crimes and misfortunes, with 
its code of dishonesty and cruelty, with its bad art, bad 
taste, bad form, and pernicious education — is the daily 
newspaper a messenger of peace? 



GOOD WILL TOWARDS MEN 35 

Time will answer these questions and cure these ills. 

And yet, despite all this, or rather because of all this, 
here in Bohemia, whither come "only those whose hearts 
are to gentle thoughts inclined," we will raise our voices 
this Christmas-tide and sing "On earth peace, good will 
toward men." 

At Christmas time all clouds have a silver lining. Then 
orange blossoms take the place of widow's weeds ; the music 
of the dance is substituted for the funeral dirge; plenty 
drives out poverty; weeping changes into laughter, and 
sadness into joy; smiles dry up tears; peace interrupts 
war; and St. Nicholas usurps the throne of Mars. 

At Christmas time our hearts "open to the sesame of love 
and fair good will," and we wish no man harm. 

At Christmas time men are children, and children are 
happy. 

Great is St. Nicholas ! His generosity, following the 
moon and keeping company with the stars, encircles the 
earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of child- 
hood's merry laughter, making the bad good, and the good 
better; softening the hard of heart, and loosening the 
miser's purse strings; giving surcease to pain, and relief 
from sorrow; and inspiring us all to exclaim with hope, 
"On earth peace, good will toward men !" 

Great is St. Nicholas! He gives a jewel to the mother, 
a toy to the babe, and food to the beggar at the gate. He 
stills the din of the foundry where men forge guns and 
build battleships, and hangs o'er its door the mistletoe as 
a sign of peace. He allures the man of science from the 
making of a deadlier dynamite and a more powerful pow- 
der, and rears a Christmas tree in his laboratory as a symbol 
of good will. In camp and field he hushes the beat of 
drum and blast of trumpet and tread of marching armies, 



36 PEACE ON EARTH, 

and whispers in each soldier's soul, "On earth peace, good 
will toward men." 

So it has been in the past. "Years upon years ago 
the heavenly heralds sang peace and good will." So it is 
in the present. And yet, 'tis nearly nineteen hundred years, 
and still the peace of the world shrinks behind the files 
of forced fighters, and war clouds hang ever low and 
threatening. But there shall be lasting peace beneath a 
cloudless sky, and all the year be Christmas time. Strike 
off the chains from the imagination ! Give free rein to 
fancy! Fly into the future upon the noiseless wings of 
time, when wars shall be no more; place your ear at 
Christmas time to the Phonograph of the Ages, and you 
will hear, attuned to the music of the spheres, "a chant 
sublime of peace on earth, good will to men." 

"Then peal the bells more loud and deep : 
God is not dead nor doth he sleep; 
The wrong shall fail, 
The right prevail. 
With peace on earth, good will to men." 

Is the prophecy Utopian? Remember that at Christmas 
all the world is Utopia, and St. Nicholas is its patron 
saint. 



"HAEC OLIM MEMINISSE JUVABIT." 



(Delivered at the Christmas High Jinks of the Bohemian Club, 
December 29, 1894.) 



GENTLEMEN of Bohemia, and the strangers within 
our gates, Welcome ! We have much to offer you 
this evening, and I bespeak your kind attention. I regret 
that we are so cramped in our quarters as to crowd you 
so closely together. This, however, assures me that we 
are all in touch. 

During the past year you have been compelled to hear 
me do so much talking that you must be weary of the 
sound of my voice. I shall, therefore, let you off with a 
few remarks. 

It is customary for one of our Bohemian artists to paint 
a cartoon for each Jinks. For this occasion we have this 
beautiful pastel from the easel of Arthur Matthews. Its 
conception was an inspiration; its execution was the work 
of a master. 

Our musical director this evening is an old Bohemian 
friend, Lewis Schmidt. He is a prince of harmony, and, 
when he waves his baton, discords take their flight. 

The Low Jinks will be sired by Mr. Charles Josselyn, 
whose manager is Mr. James M. Hamilton, the ''Actors' 
Friend." From the posters hung upon our walls, and from 
the splendid programme which Mr. Josselyn has prepared, 
I can promise you a very merry conclusion to the even- 
ing's entertainment. 



38 "HAEC OLIM MEMINISSE JUVABIT" 

As an ancient Roman said, "Haec olim meminisse juva- 
bit" — "Hereafter it will be pleasant to remember these 
things." Thus runs the legend upon the escutcheon of a 
college society to which I belonged when I was getting ready 
to knock at life's door and demand admittance. It was 
one of youth's rash prophecies, borrowed from the dead past 
to give fitting expression to the hopes of the living pres- 
ent. I have written this prophetic utterance upon the 
circular of this Christmas Jinks, anticipating its fulfill- 
ment as confidently as I did when life was younger and I 
had not even dreamed of Bohemia. 

"Hereafter it will be pleasant to remember these things." 
True, the mistletoe and the holly, the cedar and the pine 
that now decorate our halls will wither and fade; the 
branches of the Christmas tree will droop, unvexed by 
their rare burdens; the Christmas bells will cease their 
chiming, and Christmas anthems will die away with the 
organ's peal; and yet no one would, or will, forget them. 

Bohemia's Christmas always has been, is, and I hope 
always will be unique as well as interesting. We jest and 
we jibe, we drink and make merry, and yet, at Christmas- 
tide, when the eyes of the world, looking back over nine- 
teen centuries, concentrate upon a lowly manger in the 
land of Judea, and behold in the birth of Mary's child 
the advent of the God who should give himself unto death 
upon the cross in order that the rest of mankind might 
sin with impunity, when "the angels' song rings every- 
where, and all the earth is Holy-land," this Club, true to 
its history, always joins in the general reverence shown 
the Man of Galilee, tunes its harp to sacred strains, and 
sings those two sacred songs, Noel and Nazareth. 

Looking back over the records of our High Jinks, I 
find that the Sires have done honor to nearly every distin- 
guished man, to almost every theme, sacred or profane. 



"HAEC OLIM MEMINISSE JUVABIT" 39 

Tommy Newcomb talked of Thackeray, Paul Newman of 
Faust, Harry Edwards of Shakespeare, Frank Newlands 
of Hood, James Bowman of Tennyson, Judge Wheeler of 
Scott, Joe Ford of Dickens, Dr. Deane of Holmes, Beverly 
Cole of Byron, Smyth Clark of Burns, Hugh Burke of 
Hawthorne, Caspar Schenck of Lamb, Joe Redding of 
Utopia, and Phelan of the Muses, Judge Boalt of Illusions, 
and Barbour Lathrop of Dreams, General Barnes of the 
poets who have sung of war. Uncle George of the poets 
\vho have sung of the sea, and Fred Somers of An Ideal 
Bohemia; but it has always been the privilege of the 
President of the Club to sire the Christmas Jinks and 
talk of the Christ. 

It matters not, in one sense, whether he was the son of 
God or of man; whether his crucifixion upon Calvary 
was the murder of a Divinity or the execution of a crank; 
whether the birth in the manger, the death on the cross, 
the ascension from the mount were parts of a divine plan 
for the redemption of man, or fictions of the human brain, 
Christmas is a heritage, come down to us from the cen- 
turies, wreathed with the smiles of children, opening our 
purses, illuminating our souls, spanning the chasms of hate 
with bridges of love, bringing to the level of peace and 
good-will man and master, bondman and free, filling our 
hearts with thanksgiving, and voicing our tongues with 
praise that, through fact or fancy, fanaticism or faith, we 
have this annual holiday when, just before the drop-curtain 
of the year falls upon the Play of Time, the Tragedy 
becomes a Comedy, the good are rewarded and the bad 
forgiven, the poor are remembered, and the rich are happy, 
and Love is queen ; that, as the days of disappointment and 
nights of pain, the hours of anguish and moments of 
sorrow crowd the calendar of the months going glimmer- 
ing through the dream of things that were, we have the 



40 "HAEC OLIM MEMINISSE JUVABIT" 

sweet consolation that the passmg year can not close with- 
out bringing this Christmas-tide, when the hypnotism of 
love obliterates the ravages of hate, and so inclines our 
hearts and determines our conduct that we are able to 
exclaim, "Hereafter it will be pleasant to remember these 
things." 

And now, my friends, I make this personal application. 
Nine months ago, in anticipation of Santa Claus, I hung 
up the stocking of the Presidency. At this Christmas 
festival I empty its contents before you. The alchemy of 
Bohemianism, the elixir of good-fellowship has modified all 
differences, softened all criticisms, eliminated all kicks; 
and my Christmas gifts are the kind indulgence and hearty 
good-will of all the members of this Club that we love 
so much, and which now seems to prosper so well. Here- 
after it will be pleasant to me to remember these things; 
and when my days have fallen into the sere and yellow 
leaf, and life become a memory, it will be my pride and 
my pleasure to exclaim, as did Stoddard: 

"My dreams, ambitions fine, 
My youth, my joys divine, 
My fasts, my feasts, my wine, 
Were thine, Bohemia." 

May this Club's Christmas holidays always come and 
go undimmed by the shadow of a cross ! As at its Mid- 
summer Jinks it cremates its cares, at its Christmas Jinks 
may it always forget them! And at Christmas, "when 
shepherds watch their flocks by night," when 

"The bells of the ages ring, 
And the little children sing 
For the lifting of the yoke, 
For the giving to the poor, 
For that all-excelling art, 



"HAEC OLIM MEMINISSE JUVABIT" 41 

The building of the heart, 
For the sure and lasting good 
Of a common brotherhood," 

let us always write above our door in flaming letters of 
holly berries the inscription on the sun-dial found in the 
Garden of the Gods, "Nullas horas nisi serenas numero" — 
"No hours I count but happy ones" — for such hereafter 
it will be pleasant to recall. 



THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 



(Delivered at the Christmas High Jinks of the Bohemian Club, 
December i8, 1897.) 



MR. PRESIDENT and Sire, Brother Bohemians: 
The woof of life is a strange intermingling of threads 
spun from sunshine and from shadow. Nowhere is this 
more apparent than in this Club, where the moralist and 
the minstrel, the poet and the punster, the judge and the 
jester, receive each in quick succession due attention and 
applause. 

Although at a later hour this evening mirth and wit and 
revelry will here hold high carnival, "Noel" has just been 
sung, and our souls, charmed by the singer's voice, have 
risen to the spirit of the words and the music of this sacred 
song. While your ears are thus attuned and your minds 
so inclined, I shall try to pitch my few remarks in the 
same sacred key. 

In the beginning, God said let there be light in the 
heavens. But this was a material, physical light, to guide 
our corporal feet along their devious pathways from the 
cradle to the grave. What light has he set in the heavens 
to dispel the darkness of the soul, to cause tears to sparkle 
like dewdrops in the sunhsine, to make life itself luminous? 
What is the Light of the World, whose Sun has no setting? 

Is it Art? Art has been busy for centuries in beautifying 
the world and in teaching man to appreciate the perfection 
of God's handiwork. And yet, though its light may help 
to illumine man's condition, it has produced too often a 
mirage whose waters are but the sands of the desert and 
whose castles are in the air. 



THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 43 

Is it Science? Its light burns most brilliantly only to 
increase the depth of its shadows, dazzling the eye but 
not warming the heart. 

Is it Wealth? Though gold may feed the hungry, 
clothe the naked, and house the shelterless; equip armies, 
build navies, conquer kingdoms, and command science and 
art to fill its coffers and decorate its palaces; though to 
the eager eye of the Klondiker the aurora borealis may 
pale its ineffectual fire before the glitter of nuggets in the 
frozen north; though gold may seem to be a sun by day 
and a meteor by night, it is but a will-o'-the-wisp whose 
light is a fatal illusion, fading into Cimmerian darkness 
when one's feet are stiunbling and danger is near. 

Is it Liberty? The Caesars and Napoleons of the past 
have too frequently snuffed out its flickering flame to allow 
its light to be an abiding hope to suffering humanity. 

Is it Religion? Go read your Bibles and Korans ! Recall 
the persecutions, inquisitions, and massacres in which priests 
have incited to death and destruction by the sign of the cross 
as well as the crescent. Was it the religion of those gods 
whose awful vengeance human sacrifice alone could appease ? 
Was it the religion that on the Nile found expression in the 
mysteries of Isis, or in Greece in the mysteries of Eleusis? 
Was it the religion proclaimed on Mount Sinai 'mid thun- 
der and lightning, and whose God was Jehovah, or was 
it that which sacrificed to Jupiter on Mount Olympus? 
Was it the religion of Zoroaster, whence came the wisdom 
of the Magi? Is it the religion of Islam, born of Moham- 
med's zeal and established by Mohammed's sword? Is it 
the religion of Buddha, in which there is neither prayer 
nor praise, neither supplication nor thanksgiving, neither 
bended knee nor upraised hand, which teaches that life 



44 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 

is but a succession of existences, self-upholding or self- 
debasing, and Nirvana a haven of "sinless, stirless rest" 
where "the aching craze to live ends, and life glides life- 
less to nameless quiet, nameless joy," disappearing like a 
"dewdrop sinking into a shining sea"? Or is it the religion 
of Jesus Christ, whose God listens to prayer and invites 
to praise, and whose heaven is a home of eternal peace 
where life begins its immortality? 

Is it Buddhism, Mohammedanism, Judaism, or Chris- 
tianity? 

No, it is none of these. The Light of the World never 
shone in India, Arabia, or Judea alone. To it all the world 
is Palestine. It is and must be omni-radiant, and this 
neither Art, nor Science, nor Gold is — no, nor Liberty or 
Religion either, whose lights have often gone out quenched 
in blood. The Light of the World is Love, and it sheds 
its radiance into life's darkest corners, brightening their 
atmosphere of gloom, and giving to night the promise of 
dawn, and has done so from the earliest moment of that 
initial day when life began. 

The Light of the World is Love, and it illumines the 
hearts of men and shows how self is softened by sacrifice. 

The Light of the World is Love, and it dispels the 
clouds that often veil the sun of happiness and the star 
of hope, and enables blind despair to see the path that 
leads to life's fulfillment. 

The Light of the World is Love, and by the magic of 
its shining plenty fills many a board that had lacked a 
crust of bread, a downy couch pillows many a head that 
had tossed on bed of straw, and poverty becomes a partner 
of prosperity. 

As all these flaming worlds revolve in space, tied all 
together and held in place by the invisible bonds of attrac- 
tion that unite in one great central sun whence come all 



THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 45 

light and life, so do all human souls pursue their appointed 
courses, tied all together by the invisible bonds of love that 
centre in the heart of the great Father of all and which 
Christians believe are guided thither by the hands of him 
who died on Calvary, and v/hose birth is celebrated at this 
Christmas festival. 

Though all the nations do not acknowledge Christ as 
himself the Light of the World, yet all must admit him 
worthy to be the divine attendant, God-appointed, to keep 
alive the sacred flame in the lamp whose light is Love. 
Therefore it is of him that at this season, in Christian 
lands, the people, both young and old, high and low, rich 
and poor, those who wear a crown of gold, and those 
who wear a crown of thorns, to the accompaniment of the 
bells in every cross-tipped steeple and of the organs in 
every cathedral choir, exultantly sing "Hosannah to the 
Son of David, Hosannah in the Highest" — and all because 
Christ loved much and taught us that God is Love. 



A CHRISTMAS-NEW YEAR TALK 



(Delivered at the Christmas Dinner of the Bohemian Club, New 
Year's Eve, i8g8.) 



FELLOW-BOHEMIANS: It was a novel idea to give a 
Christmas dinner at the birth of the new year. The two 
occasions are not only different ; they are opposites. The 
one concerns divinity and eternity, the other time and 
humanity. The one sees the cross upon its horizon, the 
other hopes for a. crown. The one is the season when to 
give is a pleasure ; the other, when to receive is an expecta- 
tion. The two combined are extremely suggestive. Would 
that my tongue could utter the thoughts they suggest to me ! 

At this moment, when memory is chained to the depart- 
ing year by mingled links of successes and failures, victo- 
ries and defeats, rejoicings and repinings, thanksgivings 
and supplications, smiles and tears, heartaches and lovers' 
whisperings, orange-blossoms and cypress-boughs, cradles 
and new-made graves, and 1898 is going glimmering through 
the dream of things that were, its pathway lit by the light 
of other days, one becomes reminiscent and fain would 
exclaim: ''Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your 
flight." 

At this moment, when memory is garlanded by hope, and 
hope is reaching out with eager hands to grasp the year 
now dawning, and anticipation, outstripping expectation, 
and paced by ambition, speeds along the rainbow path of 
promise to golden fulfillment, one would fain also exclaim, 
"Hasten, oh, hasten. Time, in your flight !" 



A CHRISTMAS-NEW YEAR TALK 47 

At this moment of such conflicting emotions, when the 
mind wanders from pleasures past to joys to come, and from 
honors to be gained to laurels worn and won, let us solve 
the doubt by letting go of the yesterdays we can not hold, 
by looking only toward the tomorrows we needs must face, 
and by joining in sincerest welcome to the future that comes 
apace. 

At this moment, when Christmas carols, sung anew to the 
accompaniment of New- Year's bells, glorify the birth of 
this new year, the youngest born child of Time, the heir 
of all the years before and since Christ was born, let us 
imagine that our hearts are belfries pointing to the skies, 
and that in each the bells in joyous chorus are ringing out 
a New- Year's carol of peace and prosperity to all who 
dwell beneath the stars. 

If such be the outcome of our thoughts this evening, 
then will the magic of true philosophy have entered our 
lives, and started us aright as path-finders through the unex- 
plored days of 1899, each one to his own El Dorado. 

And now that, after the storm and stress of war, white- 
winged Peace, like the dove of old, has returned bearing 
the olive-branch to intertwine with the mistletoe in Spanish 
and American homes alike, and in the islands of the eastern 
and western seas, and at this Christmas-tide all the Chris- 
tian nations again can join in the chorus the angels sing, 
"Peace on earth, good will to men," may this nation at the 
opening of its new-born, battle-christened career prove itself 
a safe path-finder through the days of the year this night 
beginning; may this path lead to its El Dorado, the hap- 
piness of its people, and the leadership of the nations in 
the cause of man's hiunanity to man, and may its sun by 
day and its pillar of fire by night through all the coming 
years be the torch that liberty holds to light the world ! 
Then will all mankind acclaim that every American soldier 



48 



A CHRISTMAS-NEW YEAR TALK 



and sailor who gave his life for his flag in the Spanish- 
American War of 1898 nobly died, whereby millions may 
nobly live. ^ 



THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 



(Delivered at the High Jinks of the Bohemian Club, Decem- 
ber 22, igoo.) 



[The theme was the meeting of the three wise men as narrated 
in "Ben Hur," adapted to the occasion. The scene is the tent of a 
Sheik in the desert. A Hindoo, an Egyptian, and a Greek enter, 
and tell each the story of his faith, and the revelation as to the 
birth of Christ. The Greek speaks this speech.] 



M 



OST Reverend and Wise Sheik: 

"From the land of Delphi am I come, 
Where seated on the centre of the world 
His oracles Apollo to mankind 
Of yore disclosed, ever chanting of events 
To come." 

From the prince to the peasant, all alike ever wanted to 
know what would follow the setting of the sun. 

In this insatiable longing to anticipate the slow^ march 
of time, to peep behind the curtain of the future and know 
what of good or ill tomorrow holds for our weal or woe, 
to unlock the gates of Fate, and tread before our time the 
pathways of the gods; in this impatience with the present, 
this curiosity as to the future, lie man's surest promise of 
life hereafter, the cause of his unrest, the mainspring of 
his ambition, the inspiration of his highest aspirations 
towards eternity. 

In my youth I believed in all the gods that the fertile 
fancy of my people could create. I found gods in stones, 



50 THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 

goddesses in the running brooks, and divinity in every- 
thing. "God was in the sea and sky — He lived in light 
and rode in storm." 

From the foam of ocean's crests we fashioned Aphrodite, 
that earth might share with heaven in the worship of the 
beautiful. Artists out of marble carved her form divine, 
and to her altars were raised whence leaped the sacred 
flame, and men worshiped at her shrine and called her 
Love, "for there is than Love no holier name," and thus 
addressed her: 

"Thou art the love celestial, seeking still 
The soul beneath the form ; 
The unseen beauty that doth faintly gleam 
In stars, and flowers, and waters where they roll ; 
The unheard music whose faint echoes, even. 
Make whosoever hears a homesick soul 
Thereafter, until he follows it to heaven." 

But Aphrodite was but one of those we worshiped. In 
gentle zephyrs we heard the love sighs of Aeolus, while 
in the bowlings of the wind we, trembling, listened to the 
storm-god's anger. 

Lovers, walking hand-clasped beneath the starry skies, 
plighted anew their faith at sight of Argus keeping sleep- 
less vigil over lo as she sailed her lunar course throughout 
the stilly night. 

In the laurel we beheld the trembling Daphne, and read 
therein the story of Beauty's flight and Love's immortal 
adoration. 

In the mist of the mountain, in the spray of the river, in 
the bubble of the fountain, divinity stood revealed, and 
the rainbow was the blush of the goddess of showers from 
the ardent kissing of the Sun. 

In the echo men recognized the voice of the gods of 
the hills and rocks and resounding caves. But alas, these 



THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 51 

gods but repeated the questions they were asked, and therein 
lay the disappointment of our theology. 

Mankind outgrows the mythic fancies sung to it in its 
youth, and so I outgrew my mythology. As I advanced 
in years and thought, and imagination and hope gave place 
to reason and doubt, I tired of fancy, and longed for the 
ultimate fact. Had I a soul? Was this soul immortal? 
Were all my gods foredestined to the tomb? Was the but- 
terfly, whose gossamer wings, illumined with sunshine, 
glowing resplendent with the radiance of many flowers, the 
divinity of a summer garden, or was it the fluttering emblem 
of the soul, or was it but a beauteous creature of daylight 
and of death? 

These and many other questions perplexed and puzzled 
me, and I studied the philosophers. To Socrates I went 
for light and guidance. Him the Oracle had proclaimed 
the wisest man of Greece. Plato was to me his interpreter. 
I was told that feeling and fancy are false guides, the fire- 
flies of the night of thought; that knowledge alone is 
virtue, and ignorance is the cardinal sin, and that if man 
knew the right he could not the wrong pursue. I was 
taught that wisdom and truth are above wealth and honor 
and reputation ; that from virtue comes every good to man ; 
that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or 
death, and that he and his are not neglected by the gods; 
but I was left in doubt as to the immortality of the soul. 

Was death a state of nothingness and utter unconscious- 
ness, or was it a migration of the soul from this world 
to another? 

Socrates solved not the problem of the soul. Said he 
to his judges, just before he drank the poisoned draught, 
"The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways 
— I to die, and you to live. Which is better, God only 
knows." 



52 THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 

From Socrates and his disciples, Plato and Aristotle, I 
turned to Epicurus, and I was told that the death of the 
body is the end of the soul, and the end of our hopes 
no less than of our fears. 

Said Epicurus : 

"Ah, mark those pearls of sunrise! Fast and free 
Upon the waves they are dancing. Souls shall be 
Things that outlast their bodies, when each spark 
Outlasts its wave, each wave outlasts the sea. 

"Flakes of the water, on the waters cease. 
Soul of the body, melt and sleep like these. 
Atoms to atoms — weariness to rest — 
Ashes to ashes — hopes and fears to peace!" 

This was the philosophy of the finite, a creed rounded 
by the cradle and the grave, the negation of immortality, 
the doctrine of the endless, starless, dreamless night of the 
soul. 

From this strangling of hope, this quenching of thirst for 
the waters of the Pierian spring, I recoiled in protest and 
in disappointment. If this were true, then what fools we 
had been to kill great Pan, and Olympus to dethrone ; then 
in vain had Apollo broken his lyre, unstrung his bow, and 
ceased to illumine the heavens with his shafts of light ; then 
had Phoebus from his car been hurled only this earth to 
darkness doom; then truly had all our gods become Niobes, 
and the winds and the rains were their sighs and tears. 

And yet, with my Pantheon in ruins, the idols of my 
youth heaps of broken marble, the voices of the winds and 
trees and running streams no more eloquent of deity, God- 
head banished from the world, and my soul without a future, 
I turned again, with relief, to the voice of Epicurus: 

"Rest, brother, rest. Have you done ill or well, 
Rest, rest. There is no God, no gods." 



THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 53 

Then it was that in the lonely watches of the night I 
heard a new voice say: "Get thee up, gird thy loins, and 
into the land of Judea make thy journey. There arrived, 
thy guide shall be a star. Follow it until it halts above 
a lowly stable. There in a manger will be born of a virgin 
the only Son of the one God, the Redeemer of mankind, 
come to teach the immortality of the soul, the resurrection 
of the body, the life to come, and that the grave is but 
the gateway to heaven to those who believe in the one God, 
and in His only begotten Son." 

Here was the answer instead of the echoed question. 

Therefore, O Sheik, in my search for truth I have crossed 
the sea to this consecrated land, my heart rejuvenated with 
the new birth of hope, my soul's confidence in its immor- 
tality restored by this promise, my mind ready to accept this 
new faith. Let us journey to Bethlehem; thitherward 
beckons God's messenger of light. 



"THE TEMPEST' 



(Delivered at a Shakspearean Breakfast given to Frederick 

Warde by W. Greer Harrison, Bohemian 

Club, February lo, 1895.) 



MR. CHAIRMAN : This beautiful table, loaded with 
meat and drink, and garnished with flowers — this 
room decorated with the work of artists and resplendent 
with light — this large company of cultured and jovial Bohe- 
mians, do honor to your generous hospitality; and the sub- 
ject to which you have requested us all to direct our 
thoughts bespeaks your good literary taste, and is a deserved 
compliment to your distinguished guests, Messrs. Warde 
and James, whose proud and successful claim to public 
favor is largely based upon their magnificent and artistic 
productions of the Tragedies of Shakspeare. 

Our theme is Shakspeare; Shakspeare's theme — a poet 
thus defines it : 

"Whate'er we know, whate'er we dream, 
All things that are, all things that seem, . 
All that in Nature's Academe 
Her graduates learn 
Was Shakspeare's theme." 

In none of his immortal plays did the genius of this 
great dramatist shine more brilliantly than in "The Tem- 
pest," wherein he epitomized himself in the magician's role 
of Prospero. I beg leave to ask your attention to a few 
thoughts suggested by this beautiful idyl of the sea. 

A king and suite were returning to Naples from the 



"THE TEMPEST" 55 

Afric shores, whither they had journeyed to give in mar- 
riage an Italian princess to the lord of Tunis. A storm 
overtook them. The winds tore the royal sails, the waves 
rolled mountains high and threatened to overwhelm the 
royal ship. It was a time when strong hands and brave 
hearts were needed to fight the ocean in its angriest mood, 
and combat the winds in their wildest fury. It was the 
moment of the Storm King's rule, when His Majesty of 
the winds and waves and thunder-laden clouds, his sceptre 
the lightning's flash, brooked no rivalship, human or divine, 
blotting out even the stars with his besom of destruction. 
At such a time manhood asserts its leadership, and so-called 
royal hearts oft quail beneath the kingly ermine. The 
ship trembled, the thunder pealed, the lightning flashed 
as if it would burn the tattered sails upon the masts, and 
the frightened monarch, forgetting his usual tone of com- 
mand, in suppliant voice pleaded: "Good Boatswain, have 
care! Where's the Master? Play the men!" 

"I pray you, keep below!" yelled the Boatswain, as he 
battled with the storm. 

"Where's the Master, Boatswain?" begged one of the 
shivering nobles. 

"Do you not hear him?" shouted he whom danger had 
for the moment made the king. "You mar our labor; keep 
your cabins; you do assist the storm." 

"Nay, good, be patient!" came back the pleading reply; 
whereupon this man of the people, this common sailor, 
rising in the fullness of his courage and strength to the 
grandeur of the occasion, and indignant at their interrup- 
tion, replied, in tones of command: "When the sea is. 
Hence ! What care these roarers for the name of King?'' 

At this brave utterance the listening spirits of the air, 
sent forth by Prospero's magic wand, must have cried 
"Bravo !" and He who rules the heavens and the earth, 



56 "THE TEMPEST" 

whose sceptre sways o'er land and sea, and whose kingdom 
extends o'er all the worlds that revolve in space, must have 
exclaimed, ''Bravely said!" Nothing more eloquent ever 
fell from mortal lips, or stirred listening multitudes to loud- 
est applause. The Tribunes of the people from this humble 
mariner could take profitable example. 

Shakspeare could not only be eloquent, he could also be 
tender. With a master's skill he played upon the human 
heart, arousing at will every passion that makes or mars 
humanity. 

We admire and marvel at the men his genius created ; we 
love the women his fancy painted. 

We picture Viola as she described Olivia, 

"'Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white 
Nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on:" 

and every lover for centuries since thus has idealized his 
heart's Viola. 

We can hear Cordelia's voice, ''ever soft, gentle, and low," 
and we weep sympathetic tears as we read that tender 
description of her: 

"You have seen 
Sunshine and rain at once ; her smiles and tears 
Were like a better day : Those happy smiles, 
That played on her ripe lip, seem'd not to know 
What guests were in her eyes ; which parted thence, 
As pearls from diamonds dropped." 

We wander at evening 'neath Italian skies, and remem- 
ber that Juliet's 

"Eye in heaven 
Would through the airy region stream so bright, 
That birds would sing, and think it were not night." 

But, above them all, more than Rosalind or Juliet, Des- 
demona or Imogen, Viola or Ophelia, Cordelia or Isabella, 
Shakspeare loved Miranda. He created her as beautiful 



"THE TEMPEST" 57 

as the morning, as pure as an angel, and upon the unwrit- 
ten tablet of her soul the first word he penciled was love. 
There was more magic in her eye than in Prospero's 
wand, and we do not wonder that Ferdinand, listening 
to the mysterious music of the invisible singer, on first 
beholding her, should exclaim, "Most sure, the goddess on 
whom these airs attend," and that forthwith he worshiped 
her. Read all the romances of all the ages, and now^here 
will you find another so eloquent a declaration of love as 
that in which he thus addressed her: 

"Admired Miranda! 
Indeed the top of admiration ! Worth 
What's dearest to the world ! Full many a lady 
I have eyed with best regard, and many a time 
The harmony of their tongues hath into bondage 
Brought my too diligent ear ; for several virtues 
Have I liked several women ; never any 
With so full soul, but some defect in her 
Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed, 
And put it to the foil ; but you, O you. 
So perfect and so peerless, are created 
Of every creature's best!" 

How beautiful her reply, as she offered herself to him 
as guilelessly as does the rose when at morn she lifts her 
dewey lips to be kissed by the sun: 

"Hence, bashful cunning. 
And prompt me, plain and holy innocence ! 
1 am your wife, if you will marry me ; 
If not, I'll die your maid," 

Is not such a picture a strange one in a tempest? Did 
not Shakspeare intend her to be the rainbow after the 
storm? 

Should a tempest shipwreck any of us, may some good 
Prospero wave his magic wand o'er our misfortunes, as 



^^ "THE TEMPEST" 



I 



B 



'ILLUSIONS" 



(Delivered at a Dinner at the Bohemian Club, April 17, 1^97, 

celebrating the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the Club and 

the Eightieth Birthday of George T. Bromley.) 



MR. PRESIDENT: Among the many paintings that 
adorn our walls one of the most interesting is the 
portrait of Emperor Norton, an old character who was 
some years ago a familiar figure on our streets. Robert 
Louis Stevenson in his story entitled "The Wrecker" thus 
refers to him and to San Francisco : 

"In what other city would a harmless madman who sup- 
posed himself the emperor of the two Americas have been 
so fostered and encouraged? Where else would even the 
people of the streets have respected the poor soul's illu- 
sions?" 

The explanation of this circumstance is found in the 
fact that the career of this old man characterized an era 
of illusions in California. People had been and were still 
rushing to this State, believing it the long sought El Dorado 
of their hopes, where the manna of wealth fell in showers 
of gold. California at that time was itself an illusion. A 
mysterious land, separated from the rest of the world on 
one side by a range of mountains whose snowy peaks chill 
the clouds and on the other by the sea into whose multitud- 
inous waters sink the sky at the point where the eye quits 
seeing, it seemed a country for which God had done every- 
thing. Poets sang of it as the land 



60 "ILLUSIONS" 

"Where summers never cease 
Their sunny psalm of light and peace, 
Whose moonlight, poured for years untold, 
Has drifted down in dust of gold. 
Whose morning splendors fallen in showers. 
Leave ceaseless sunrise in her flowers." 

I can imagine that it was then described in glowing 
terms as the daughter of the setting sun, "a fair vestal 
throned by the West," around her brow a wreath of orange 
blossoms, over her head a bower of roses, at her feet a 
carpet of wild flowers, in her eye the blue of the violet, 
and in her hair a golden sheen; her dowry cattle upon a 
thousand hills, rivers flowing over sands of gold, moun- 
tains ribbed with wealth untold, vales where grow the 
clustering vine, myriad casks of purple wine, boundless 
fields of v^aving grain, coffers filled with countless gain. 

At that time a man without an illusion had no place in 
our midst, and generally returned to the abandoned farms 
of New England. It was during that period, and just 
twenty-five years ago, that this Club was founded, the corner- 
stone of its temple being the illusion of the owl, and the 
columns of its portico being those four illusions — Art, Let- 
ters, Music, and the Drama. On its portals was inscribed 
"Good-fellowship," at its shrine was worshiped the beau- 
tiful, and it was named Bohemia. Upon its outer wall it 
hung out a banner bearing this strange device: "Weaving 
spiders come not here." Where else but in this land of 
illusions could such a club have sprung into existence, 
and so grown and strengthened as to survive the change 
of circumstance that the years have wrought on its sur- 
roundings? 

These reflections suggest some thoughts to which I ask 
your attention. 



"ILLUSIONS" 61 

Illusion is the rainbow path of promise along which we 
follow hope to the not always mythical bag of gold. It is 
the sun whose rays light us on the way to the ideal. It is 
the atmosphere that gives to the real a beauty that it does 
not possess. Without it art would not exist, music would 
be meaningless, letters would fill no pages, and the curtain 
would never rise upon the mimic stage. The artist paints 
what he feels, and his picture is not to us what it is, but 
what it seems. The orator and novelist appeal to the soul's 
aspirations and epitomize only its dreams. The musician 
transports us on wings of harmony to Elysian fields whose 
presiding spirit is unreality. The actor openly acknowl- 
edges that his world is that of the make-believe. 
The illusions of life are its inspirations. 
It is in the illusions of youth that life's ambitions are 
born. It is with the illusions of the heart that love's fires 
are kept burning. It is from the illusions of the mind that 
genius culls the flowers of fancy to garland this world 
of fact. 

It was through the illusion of beauty that 
"There fell a vision to Praxitiles ; 
Watching thro' drowsy lids the loitering seas 
That lay caressing with white arms of foam 
The sleeping marge of his Ionian home, 
He saw great Aphrodite standing near, 
Knew her, at last, the beautiful he had sought 
With life-long passion, and in love and fear 
Into unsullied stone the vision wrought." 

It was the illusion of love that caused Anthony to barter 
fame and fortune, conquest and coronet, Rome, the world, 
for a wanton's smiles, and linked together for all time 
the names of Anthony and Cleopatra in the greatest love 
story of the ages. 

It was the same illusion that diverted Dante's thoughts 
from the Divine Comedy to the sad-eyed Beatrix, immortal- 



62 "ILLUSIONS" 

ized Laura with the pen of Petrarch, and wiped out the 
hate of the Montagues and the Capulets with the sacrifice 
of Romeo and Juliet. 

It is the illusion of youth and beauty that orange blos- 
soms will never fade, and that their perfume will ever scent 
the future with sweet remembrances, and it is this illusion 
alone that keeps wedding bells a-ringing. 

It was the illusion of superstition that inspired the 
peasant maid of Donremy to hear in the chiming of the 
church bells the voices of angels calling her to lead the 
Dauphin to Rheims to be crowned, whereby was the fulfill- 
ment had of an ancient prophecy that a virgin should 
rescue and redeem France, and thus was the name of Joan 
of Arc spoken by the muse of history into the phonograph 
of time, the whispering gallery of the centuries. 

Though it is the illusion of faith that shocked humanity 
by the massacre of the Armenians, and today hurls Chris- 
tian and Moslem at each other's throats, endangering the 
peace of two continents, it is the same illusion that robs 
death of its sting and the grave of its victory, and makes 
the crown of thorns the glory of those who die in the 
Lord, and to the followers of the Prophet pictures heaven 
as a period of perpetual youth companioned by dark-eyed 
maidens whose home is in the hollow of a pearl. 

Though it is the illusion of patriotism that has devas- 
tated Cuba and Crete, it is the same illusion that leads 
Maceo to a hero's grave, crowning his name with match- 
less fame, and that will yet pluck the gem of the Antilles 
from the blood-stained crown of Spain; that has rekindled 
in Greece that spirit that fought at Marathon, and is now 
impelling Greeks, at the call of Pallas Athene, to hasten 
from earth's remotest corners, from the Golden Gate to 
the "gate of the mid-world's sea," to fight, and, if need 
be, to die for their native land. 



"ILLUSIONS" 63 

Though it was the illusion of liberty, equality, and fra- 
ternity that cut off the heads of a king and a queen and 
deluged a land with noble blood that Napoleon might 
rear his empire of the sword upon the liberties of France, 
it was this same illusion that founded our great Republic, 
and afterwards rent it asunder with fratricidal strife that 
it might become a united nation with no longer a North 
or a South, and no longer a slave beneath its flag. 

But enough of instances ! These are sufficient to satisfy 
us that though illusion may be a will-o'-the-wisp, leading 
us often by its false light to disappointment and defeat, 
it at least leads us somewhere, onward if not always 
upward; that though it may be a mirage covering the 
desert with mythical waters and building marble cities out 
of clouds, yet it revives drooping energies and rekindles 
flagging hopes, and at least postpones the end that we 
must inevitably find somewhere. 

Let us, therefore, cherish our illusions and envy old 
Emperor Norton. His illusion was respected and never 
dispelled. He fancied himself a monarch, and never knew 
that his kingdom was but the baseless fabric of a dream. 
How much more fortunate he was than Napoleon, who 
believed that his star would guide him to universal sov- 
ereignty, and died a lonely prisoner on the isle of St. 
Helena, bewailing his lost illusion. 

Let us envy this Club ! It has no lost illusions. It still 
worships the owl, cheers the orator, applauds the musician, 
encourages the artist, believes in good-fellowship, and clings 
to its banner with its proclamation against weaving spiders. 
Above all these it cherishes one special illusion. It believes 
that Uncle George is an old man because the years have 
come and gone for him some eighty times, frosting his 
locks and making slow his steps. May it for many years 
hug this illusion to its breast, for its arms thereby more 



64 "ILLUSIONS" 

closely enfold him in loving care and tenderness.. The 
fact is that he really is a young man, rejuvenated by a 
cheerfulness and amiability that grow with his years, and 
that make him dearer and dearer to us in this club of 
illusions. 



BOHEMIA 



(Delivered in the Redivoods at the Midsummer Jinks of the 

Bohemian Club, July 23, 1898. The theme of the Jinks 

zvas "Days of Long Ago." The speaker 

appeared as a Greek scholar of the first 

century of the Christian Era.) 



WHERE is Bohemia? What is Bohemia? These 
questions will go querying down the ages, and 
answers will be diverse, contradictory, and erroneous, accord- 
ing to the temperament, knowledge, and prejudices of the 
answerers. To millions Bohemia will ever be a distant 
country, known only by report, and this report too fre- 
quently a false and malicious one. Too often has my 
blood boiled when I have heard the wineshops of Athens 
spoken of as Bohemia's only favorite haunts. Too often 
has my heart bled when I have heard it said that life in 
Bohemia means only idleness by day and revelry by night. 
People who so speak have drunk only of the froth, and 
missed the flavor of the wine beneath. 

To me Bohemia is a land where truth triumphs over 
falsehood; where beauty brightens life, and ugliness is 
pain; where culture breeds refinement, and ignorance is 
disgrace ; and where art elevates man's ambitions and ideal- 
izes his inspirations. To me Bohemia is a condition of 
life wherein man attains his highest level in the worship 
of the true, the beautiful, and the good. 

Bohemianism is both a conscious and unconscious appre- 
ciation of the ideal. It ennobles and refines, and lifts man's 



66 BOHEMIA 

gaze from the sod to the sun. Out of Bohemia men stoop 
because of their perpetual digging in the earth for gold. 
In Bohemia they stand erect that they may better see the 
stars. 

Bohemia is everywhere. Though, like the earth, it has 
its pits and its peaks, its deep canyons always in the 
shadow, and its broad uplands always in the sunshine, its 
dismal swamps where death ever lurks, and its bright val- 
leys where life ever blooms resplendent, its waters of Lethe 
and its immortelles, yet, like life, its evolution is ever 
upward, its aim is perfection, and its hereafter the accom- 
plishment thereof. 

The true children of Bohemia are artists and all who 
worship art though ever so humbly, poets and all whose 
souls keep rythmic step with the pulse of humanity, musi- 
cians and all whose ears revel in the harmonies of the 
universe, and every soldier who fights for an ideal, whether 
it be a flag or a fancy. 

The true children of Bohemia build our temples, adorn 
them with statues, and place laurel wreaths on the sculp- 
tor's brow, strike the lyre and charm the world with song, 
dip their brushes in rainbow tints and give expression to 
Art, lecture in the porticos, write in the libraries, and 
speak on the rostrums — and just as true children of 
Bohemia are all those also who follow, learn from, sym- 
pathize with, and appreciate these. 

In Bohemia Genius is the Sun, the God of its idolatry, 
and Bohemians all are Fire-worshipers. 

Bohemia is the Republic of Brains, wherein any creation 
of the intellect is a certain passport to preferment, and 
where merit never fails of recognition. 



BOHEMIA 67 

Therefore I love Bohemia, and with one of our poets* 
I exclaim, 

"I'd rather live in Bohemia than in any other land; 
For only there are the values true ; 
And the laurels gathered in all men's view. 
The prizes of traffic and state are won 
By shrewdness of force or by deeds undone; 
But fame is sweeter without the feud, 
And the wise of Bohemia are never shrewd. 
Here, pilgrims stream with a faith sublime 
From every class and clime and time, 
Aspiring only to be enrolled 

With the names that are writ in the book of gold ; 
And each one bears in mind or hand 
A palm of the dear Bohemian land : 
The scholar first, with his book— a youth 
Aflame with the glory of harvested truth; 
A girl with a picture, a man with a play, 
A boy with a wolf he has modeled in clay; 
A smith with a marvelous hilt and sword, 
A player, a king, a ploughman, a lord— 
And the player is king when the door is past, 
The ploughman is crowned, and the lord is last ! 
I'd rather fail in Bohemia than win in another land ; 
There are no titles inherited there. 
No hoard or hope for the brainless heir ; 
No guilded dullard native born 
To stare at his fellow with leaden scorn: 
Bohemia has none but adopted sons ; 
Its limits, where Fancy's bright stream runs ; 
Its honors, not garnered for thrift or trade, 
But for beauty and truth men's souls have made." 

Down the centuries before my prophetic gaze stretches 
the ever lengthening procession of Bohemians, all traveling 
the paths now trodden by Homer and Sophocles, Apelles, 
Phidias and Praxitiles, Socrates and Demosthenes, Plato 



*(A pardonable anachronism. The lines are by John Boyle O'Reilly.) 



68 BOHEMIA 

and Aristotle. This procession will be interrupted, as it 
can march only by the light of day. There will come a 
long night whose darkness shall be unlit by light of single 
star, and then a new day shall dawn whose sun shall 
know no setting, and sculpture and painting and music 
and song and philosophy and poetry and letters and science 
shall make the whole world Bohemia, and all the children 
of the sons of men will be Bohemians. 

In a land beyond the setting sun, not yet by great Jove 
created, a new people shall be born, and, inheritors of 
Greek art and culture, they shall kneel at the shrine of 
the beautiful, and their souls by music shall be swayed. 
They shall assemble in a temple not built by hands, col- 
umned by trees and roofed by heaven's star-gemmed dome, 
o'er whose portal they shall inscribe "Bohemia," and o'er 
its altar "Truth and Beauty" all shall read, and humanity 
shall be its divinity. This to me the gods foretell. 



"BOHEMIA" 



(Delivered at the dedication of the new Jinks Room of the 
Bohemian Club, October 28,. 1899.) 



MR. PRESIDENT: I am asked to speak of "Bohemia 
of the Future." I must necessarily be brief, as we 
can see but a little of the future, and that dimly. Our 
foresight is limited, and can consume but little time in the 
telling. 

It is a maxim that all things come to him who waits, 
and this evening we so believe. Long have we waited for 
the coming of this occasion. In our dreams only have we 
imagined Jinks free from asphyxiation and from draughts 
winged with colds. Although the medical profession much 
affects this Club, we have not for years had a so-called 
"Doctors' " Jinks, because the Doctors claimed them all 
as their own. But their day has gone with the badly venti- 
lated, overcrowded rooms, and this Club will henceforth 
breathe fresh air. At last, in this our waking hour, our 
dream has come true, and we Ex-Presidents, adorned like 
so many Solomons in all their glory, and shining only by 
the light of other days, are gathered together as a syndi- 
cate of Has Beens, a motley group of those who did not, 
to do honor to the President who did, to celebrate his 
achievement, this fulfillment of our hopes, the dedication 
of this handsome Jinks Room. Here the Owl will have 
full plenty room to wide-spread her wings, but without any 
desire to take her flight. 



70 "BOHEMIA" 

This occasion, this spacious theater, all this splendor, is 
not only a cause for rejoicing, but is suggestive of some 
serious reflections, and more than all, the query, 'What 
Constitutes Bohemia?" 

Bohemianism may find a contented home within the 
narrow confines of a cottage, or it may be to the manner 
born in marble halls. It may be twin brother to poverty, 
or it may chum with wealth. It may thrive on hope while 
pinched with hunger, or it still may hope, though it wax 
fat on milk and honey. 

The heroes of Bohemia may be clad in rags or dressed 
in purple and fine linen, and it matters not. They would 
not be its heroes if it did matter. 

Bohemia has the witchcraft of contracting or expand- 
ing to its surroundings, and is independent of material 
environment. 

Bohemianism is the emotional side of life. It is the 
soul manifesting itself in the infinite varieties of genius, 
finding expression here in rhythmic lines, there in melo- 
dious song; here in words that burn, there in harmonies 
that exalt ; here in the living canvas, there in the breath- 
ing marble. Its magician's wand is alike the pen or pencil, 
the brush or baton. Its heritage is genius, its life-blood 
is appreciation, its daily food is good companionship. It 
is the human aspect of humanity. 

The religion of Bohemia is the worship of the beautiful, 
and to its altar come with equal welcome those who kneel 
in voiceless prayer and they who voice their holy zeal with 
brilliancy and with power. No temple can be too grand, 
no chapel too humble, for its shrine. Bohemia is Bohemia 
for a' that. 

Your programme speaks of Bohemia of the past, Bohemia 
of the present, Bohemia of the future. There can be no 



"BOHEMIA" 71 

such classification. Bohemia ever was, is, and always must 
be the same. Bohemians change, not Bohemia. 

There have been in this Club in the past Bohemians 
whom it was a privilege to meet and who have left "a 
wholesome memory" behind them, some whose names fame 
has made immortal, and some whose only Pantheon is the 
heart of every one who knew them. 

There are amongst us at the present Bohemians who are 
faithful to the traditions of this Club, and who not 
unworthily bear aloft the Banner of the Owl. 

There will be in the future those to take our places 
who will be men of high ideals, and who will cherish their 
inheritance. Neither the past nor the present has exhausted 
the wit or wisdom of this community. 

This Club will therefore live. But to live up to its 
opportunities it must be true to its name. It must always 
tend with watchful care the lamp whose flame giveth warmth 
and light, but burneth not. It must never forget the 
beggar at its gates, nor bow down before the seats of the 
mighty. It must always cultivate the simplicity of child- 
hood, the faith of womanhood, the strength of manhood. 
It must ever prize books and pictures, songs and symphonies, 
more than gold or precious stones. If it so lives, if these 
be ever its Ten Commandments, then this material growth 
and prosperity will inure to its advancement, and, like our 
country, it may expand and expand, and the world will 
be the better therefor. 

How shall I typify the "Spirit of Bohemia"? Upon 
the canvas of your imagination what picture shall I paint 
that will mean to you Bohemia? I will dip my brush in 
the rainbow, or, mayhap, the sunset sky, from sweetest 
memories I will recall the fairest face, and I will paint 
the picture of a beautiful woman, just descended from the 
clouds, daughter of the roseate dawn, in her eyes the light 



72 "BOHEMIA" 

of morning hope inspiring, around her sable locks a wreath 
of holly giving promise of festivity. I will picture her 
standing a-tiptoe on the green earth, and you will instantly 
exclaim "Bohemia!" — because in your minds will be the 
thought that where woman treads flowers grow, and such is 
Bohemia's mission, to cultivate the flowers of art and poetry 
and music and letters, to make living joyous, to make life 
beautiful. 

Lo, the picture ! Behold ! 

[Here was unveiled a painting by Theodore Wores, entitled 
"Bohemia Victrix."] 



CALIFORNIA 



(Delivered at a Jinks given by the Bohemian Club, May 15, 1901, 
to President McKinley and his Cabinet.) 



SIRE AND Gentlemen : Among the interesting stories 
that flowed from the pen of the author of "The Luck 
of Roaring Camp" is "The Legend of Monte del Diablo." 
Before the Gringo came, so runs this legend, a Spanish 
priest left the Mission of San Pablo to explore the sur- 
rounding country, and, mayhap, establish another station 
of the cross where the heathen could find salvation. He 
bent his steps towards a neighboring mountain, since called 
Mt. Diablo, and made its difficult ascent. Arrived at the 
top he encountered an elderly Hidalgo, whom he divined 
to be his Satanic Majesty in disguise. 

After a few moments' conversation, the Hidalgo said to 
the priest, "Look to the West," and at the waving of his 
plumed hat the fog melted away, leaving clear the land- 
scape of the distant ocean, the bay, the rivers, the mountain 
defiles, and the rolling plains yellow with grain as if car- 
peted with cloth of gold. The good father looked, and 
he beheld long cavalcades of cavaliers defiling from every 
ravine and canyon, all marching towards the sea, where 
stately caravels awaited them; and above these marching 
hosts and from the masts of these caravels glittered the 
cross of Santiago and the royal banners of Castile and 
Aragon. As the priest was gazing at this strange spectacle 
the Hidalgo said : "Thou hast beheld, Sir priest, the depart- 



74 CALIFORNIA 

ing footprints of adventurous Castile. Thou hast seen the 
declining glory of old Spain. The scepter she hath wrested 
from the heathen is fast dropping from her decrepit and 
failing grasp. The soil she hath acquired shall be lost to 
her irrevocably." 

The old churchman raised his priestly hand in benedic- 
tion, and exclaimed: "Farewell, ye gallant cavaliers and 
Christian soldiers ! Farewell thou, Nunes de Balboa ! Thou, 
Alonzo de Ojeda! and thou most venerable Las Casas !" 

"Now look to the East," said the Hidalgo, and the 
father beheld advancing through the passes of the snowy 
mountains a strange host, all with the blue eyes and flaxen 
hair of a Saxon race, and at their head waved a tri-colored 
banner of red, white, and blue, inscribed with no religious 
symbol, but only star-bespangled. 

"Behold," said the Hidalgo, "the future rulers of this 
land, and of distant islands where Spain now holds sway." 

Mr. President, such is the legend; such we know now 
is also history. The Anglo-Saxon came to this land of the 
Spaniard, and founded a State, and he called this State by 
its Spanish name, California ; and fifty-one years ago Cali- 
fornia knocked at the door of the Union, and asked for 
admission into the sisterhood of States. Like Minerva, 
born full grown from the brain of Jove, California was 
born fully equipped as a State. Her letter of credentials 
was her constitution, wherein she pledged herself to freedom. 

She came "neither as a supplicant nor with the arro- 
gance of presumption, but simply that she might be per- 
mitted to reap the common benefits, share the common ills, 
and promote the common welfare as one of the United 
States of America." 

Standing without the portal, to her astonished ear there 
came from within mutterings of dissension. With alarm 
she heard the giants of the land forecasting the dissolution 



CALIFORNIA 75 

of the Union if she were admitted with her constitution 
prohibiting slavery. Desirous of enlisting under the banner 
of freedom, she was dismayed to hear that her enlistment 
was opposed because of her self-dedication to the cause of 
liberty. 

Nay, more! Imagine her surprise when she heard the 
great Webster, the expounder of the constitution and cham- 
pion of the Union, whose fame, like England's drum-beat, 
encircled the world, thus describe her to the Senate of the 
United States : 

"California and New Mexico are Asiatic in their forma- 
tion and scenery. They are composed of vast ranges of 
mountains of enormous height, with broken ridges and deep 
valleys. The sides of these mountains are entirely barren, 
their tops capped by perennial snow. There may be in 
California, and no doubt there are, some tracts of valuable 
land." 

Gentlemen, now that you have traversed our fertile val- 
leys, wandered through our orange groves, marveled at the 
giants of our forests, thanked God anew for the beauty of 
our fields carpeted with flowers, and the chromatic glory 
of our floral tapestry, and beheld a Garden of Eden so 
full of apples that there is no temptation to partake thereof, 
a Garden of Eden so fair that there would have been no 
fall of man if Adam and Eve had had the good fortune 
to dwell therein ; now that you have beheld this golden 
land by the sunset sea to which Nature has been so boun- 
tiful, you can appreciate how great the transition from 
1850 to 1901, from the administration of Taylor to that 
of McKinley, and how distant San Francisco was from 
Washington in those days when so great a senator as Web- 
ster could so mis-describe California. 

But, to return to the days of 1850, when California stood 
at the Senate door impatiently listening to the storm that 



n CALIFORNIA 

her application had aroused. Imagine her delight, after 
Webster's remarkable utterances, in hearing another voice, 
like silver chiming amidst discordant brass, the voice of 
one whose patriotism was anchored firmly in the Union's 
strength, whose statesmanship was as broad as the conti- 
nent, and whose faith in our future was the inspiration of 
prophecy, the voice of Seward predicting the westward and 
wonderful growth of the Republic, and thus pleading in 
her behalf: 

''Let California come in. Every new State, whether she 
come from the East or from the West — every new State, 
coming from whatever part of the continent she may — is 
always welcome. But California, that comes from the 
clime where the West dies away into the rising East — 
California, which bounds at once the empire and the con- 
tinent — California, the youthful Queen of the Pacific, in 
her robes of freedom, gorgeously inlaid with gold — is doubly 
welcome." 

In the Congressional Globe this speech is entitled "Cali- 
fornia, Union, and Freedom." We like this title, though 
we would have written it "Freedom, Union, and Califor- 
nia." But, however phrased, the words are rightly joined. 
The winds that sweep o'er California's hills and dales, per- 
fumed by the incense of blossoming trees and flowering 
plants, never bore to listening ears the clanking of a bond- 
man's chains. 

Such is her love for the Union that she has supplemented 
the verdict of Appomattox with a declaration in her Bill 
of Rights that "The State of California is an inseparable 
part of the American Union." 

Thanks to the independence that Jefferson penned and 
Washington accomplished ! Thanks to this Union that 
Washington inaugurated, and Marshall consummated, and 
Lincoln and Grant made indissoluble, and that under the 



CALIFORNIA 11 

wise leadership of William McKinley has so expanded in 
territory and increased in might and majesty as to attract 
the wonder and arouse the anxiety of the nations ! Thanks 
to the flag of this Union in whose empyrean all the States 
as stars are fixed eternally, like pearls in a sapphire setting, 
this State of California looks forward to a glorious destiny. 

The star of her destiny is the morning star of the new- 
born century. O'er the Golden Gate it glitters, diademmin:^ 
this youthful Queen of the Pacific, in her robes of freedom, 
gorgeously inlaid with gold. 

Though California must ever bound the continent, she 
will never again bound the empire, for our flag will never 
retire from those islands of the Eastern seas where fate 
and valor planted it, and where wisdom and valor have 
maintained it. 



THE GRAPE: ITS USES, JUICES, AND ABUSES 



(Delivered at a High Jinks of the Bohemian Club, October, igoo. 
William Sproule, Sire.) 



MR. SIRE : "The Grape : Its Juices, Uses, and Abuses," 
is not only a very alliterative theme, but is also very 
fruitful, and suggests liberal treating. It affords many 
opportunities for oratory, poetry, and wit; but these oppor- 
tunities knock not at my door. They are frightened away 
by the watering-cart they see standing there. 

Did my purse and my gout permit the daily gratification 
of my appetite for dusty, cobwebby bottles of Lafite, I could 
write a thesis to prove that the use of the juice becomes 
an abuse except in the hands of a master. As it is, I must 
walk by the light of other nights, and draw upon my 
memory for my headaches. If one would thoroughly 
appreciate the grape, he must himself tread the wine-press, 
and with reverent feet press out the juice whose use or 
abuse will give wings to fancy, or feet of lead to fact. 
Fate wills that each one must himself tread the wine-press, 
and from the grapes of his own vineyard press the juice 
whose use will give inspiration to aspiration, and whose 
abuse may bring fascination, but will surely bring degra- 
dation. 

On gently sloping hills, in nestling vales, kissed by the 
sun, begemmed with the dew, and caressed by the rustling 
leaves, grows the enpurpling grape. 

In every cluster is remembrance and forgetfulness, hope 
and regret, anticipation and disappointment, love and hate, 



THE GRAPE 79 

ambition and despair, courage and fear, the fleetness of the 
deer and the sloth of the snail, the eagle's instinct to rise, 
man's readiness to fall. 

Into its juice the magician dips his wand, and lo ! there 
appear "elves of the hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves, 
and those that on the sand with printless foot chase the 
ebbing Neptune." 

Into its juice the artist dips his brush, and the moth 
becomes as iridescent as the butterfly, leaden skies as pris- 
matic as the Aurora Borealis, a cloudy morning so beauti- 
ful as to wake the singing of the lark. 

Into its juice the poet dips his pen, and the rhythm of 
our hearts and the music of our souls make life melodious. 

Its juice the orator quaffs, and thoughts that live and 
words that burn in eloquence wring plaudits from the 
stars. 

Oh, the juice of the grape ! 

It is diplomacy, and statesmen avoid the shedding of 
good blood by the drinking of good wine. 

It is business, and money-kings coin ducats out of the 
bubbles of sparkling wine. 

It is fellowship, and friendship is born of a bottle of 
wine. 

It is passion, and the flower of love blooms in blushing 
beauty when sprinkled with wine. 

It is surcease from pain, relief from sorrow, rest from 
labor, triumph's reward. 

It is the chariot of fancy, and its path is the rainbow. 

It is the Pegasus of genius, and its wings are aglow with 
the lightning. 

It is the fairy godmother of hope, and it neglects no 
Cinderella. 

It is sunlight and moonlight distilled in purple. 



80 THE GRAPE 

It is the water of the Pierian Spring, sparkling with the 
breath of angels. 

It is the eternal today of beauty, pleasure, and fruition, 
the certain tomorrow of delicious anticipation. 

It is childhood's laughter, manhood's cheers; it is lovers' 
midnight kissing. 

It is the elixir of inexhaustible desire, the one taste of 
nature that makes the whole world kin. 

Its flowers never fade, its perfumes never die, its music 
lingers forever as in the pearly galleries of a shell. 

Abuse it, and on your hearthstone will coil the dragon 
of despair, and want and woe will your companions be, 
and — but why dream of pain when you may be awake to 
pleasure? Tonight we will think of the grape and its 
juices and uses only. Its abuses we may think of tomorrow; 
but not if we bear in mind these lines from Horace : 

"O, Varus mine, 

Plant thou the vine 
Within this kindly soil of Tiber; 

Nor temporal woes, 

Nor spiritual, knows 
The man who's a discreet imbiber." 



A MEDICAL ADDRESS 



(Delivered at the Commencement Exercises of Cooper Medical 
College, San Francisco, December 5, 1895.) 



LADIES AND Gentlemen: Dr. Gushing has just told 
you that patients will deceive you as to their troubles. 
We lawyers find that clients treat us in the same way. There 
is, however, a slight difference in the results. If a patient 
lies to his doctor, he goes to the cemetery. If a client lies 
to his attorney, he either goes to jail or he goes broke. 

It is a very difficult task for a lawyer to address a body 
of medical men. He feels not qualified to talk to them 
upon their own themes, and would like to lure them on to 
mutual ground, where he has a more equal opportunity. 
He would prefer to talk to them when they are on the 
witness stand. 

In considering this occasion, I endeavored to attune my 
mind to ideas of more or less absorbing interest to physi- 
cians. I took up the work of the well-known Dr. Max 
Nordau, entitled ''Degeneration." I had not read many 
pages before I discovered that I was a mystic, an imbecile, 
an incurable degenerate, and that I must fall into line 
with degenerate musicians like Wagner, degenerate artists 
like Millais, degenerate novelists like Victor Hugo and 
Tolstoi, degenerate writers like Ruskin, et id genus omne. 
I therefore laid the book aside, with a feeling of commis- 
eration for the loneliness of Nordau in this degenerate 
world. 



82 A MEDICAL ADDRESS 

I then began to peruse the medical journals, but soon 
abandoned this attempt. Had I persisted further in this 
direction I should have had, in imagination, every disease 
that flesh is afflicted with, besides being amazed that the 
human race is not extinct. That men and women can 
read these periodicals, especially late at night when there 
is naught stirring to suggest health and life, and continue 
to be sound in mind and body, bespeaks an absence of 
nerves and a superabundance of nerve. 

These journals tended to confuse rather than to enlighten 
me. Are the organs of the human body and are physio- 
logic processes so horrible that they can not be described 
with English names, but can be spoken of only in the 
Greek and Latin tongues? Must living organs go to dead 
languages for their names? Is not the English language 
— a language that sufficed Shakspeare to run the gamut 
of humanity — comprehensive enough to supply a name for 
every nerve, organ, and bone in the human body, as well 
as to every experience of the human soul? I am told that 
medical students become proficient in these Greek and 
Latin terms and phrases, and yet some of them spell 
"germs" with a "j," put two "ss" in ''asleep," and thicken 
"skin" by adding an extra "n." We laymen would say 
in English that they have simply a "bad spell." They 
would be satisfied with nothing shorter than "orthograpa- 
resis," which means "paresis in spelling" if it means any- 
thing. 

I read about la grippe. One doctor recommended qui- 
nine; another protested against its use, and described this 
disease as arising from the presence of a microorganism, 
and this microorganism develops a ptomaine, and this pto- 
maine affects the ganglionic system. I concluded that if 
it was half that bad, it was not surprising that doctors 



A MEDICAL ADDRESS 83 

should differ in the treatment of such a calamity, what- 
ever it was. 

From the grip I turned to a disquisition upon the heart. 
I thought I knew something about this organ; that its 
chief purpose was to add luster to a maiden's eyes and 
color to her cheeks; to drive young men to extravagance 
in candy, flowers, and precious stones; and, generally, to 
interfere with the sleep and digestion of young people. I 
was mistaken. The heart devotes its working hours to 
the cultivation of myocarditis, and in its leisure moments 
amuses itself with pericarditis. I shuddered when I real- 
ized that a young girl's heart could attend to all this and 
still have time to keep men guessing. 

Apart, however, from the foregoing considerations, 
these journals were interesting to me. One article that 
I recall discussed the pleasing subject of surgery. The 
author mentioned that one of the earliest surgical operations 
recorded in history occurred in the Garden of Eden, when 
Adam had a rib extracted. I drew from this incident 
the moral that man should never go to sleep in a garden 
without first counting his ribs. Adam forgot to do this, 
slept soundly, lost a rib, and woke up in the bosom of 
his family. Thus came the "old woman," the product of 
surgery. How came the "new woman," and of what is 
she the product? If surgery will not claim her, man will 
be equally modest. 

Another article that I read treated most interestingly and 
learnedly the theory of "suggestion." The writer proved 
conclusively that bread-pills are a sure cure, if taken with 
faith in the doctor, and with the belief that he is prescrib- 
ing something else. He showed how patients recover when 
the physician they trust tells them they are better, thus 
illustrating the truth of the Savior's saying to the woman 
he healed, "Thy faith hath made thee whole." He dem- 



84 A MEDICAL ADDRESS 

onstrated how mind can suggest to mind, and how physical 
conditions can be created, modified, or exterminated by 
suggestion alone. 

My appearance here this evening is a proof of this 
writer's theory. One of this learned Faculty, Dr. Clinton 
Cushing, hypnotized me. This address is a suggestion of 
his. As in "Trilby," the voice alone is mine, the ideas 
belong to this Doctor Svengali. I must, therefore, rely 
for the success of this talk upon your faith in him, hoping 
that he has suggested to you that it will be better than it 
sounds; and further, I hope that you will take it, believ- 
ing that it is what he has suggested, and that you are not 
as badly bored as you have a right to be. 

Acting upon this delusion, I shall venture to ask your 
attention for a very few moments to some desultory remarks 
upon the learned profession we honor this evening. I have 
been seriously advised by two of my medical friends not 
to praise their profession, but to criticise it, to run the 
lancet in deeply, and not to bother about the use of an 
anaesthetic — to "roast" the doctors. It is needless to tell 
you that Doctor Svengali suggested the opposite course, 
and I must do as he wishes. Besides, misery makes us 
acquainted with strange bed-fellows, and a "fellow-feeling 
makes us wondrous kind." Lawyers and doctors are equally 
abused by the world at large. I therefore feel that the 
two professions should stand together, even to mutual 
admiration. I will praise you, hoping for similar treat- 
ment when it comes your turn. Seriously speaking, how- 
ever, if I exalt the medical profession, I do so that these 
graduates may appreciate more keenly the grave duties and 
labors they are undertaking in entering its ranks. 

The lamentations of pessimistic writers to the contrary, 
the world is moving along lines of progress. In nothing 
is this progress more apparent and more beneficial to 



A MEDICAL ADDRESS 85 

humanity than in medicine and surgery. In the early life 
of all peoples the priest and the physician were one, and 
the sign of the barber indicated also the abode of the 
surgeon. As civilization has grown with the centuries, the 
priest has remained content with faith, while the physician 
has increased his store of knowledge, and the Evil Spirit 
that the former would exorcise by prayers and incantations 
has become the bacillus that the latter exterminates by 
another bacillus. The Doctor of Medicine is no longer 
the partner of the Doctor of Divinity, nor does the surgeon 
any longer divide his time between the operating table and 
the barber's chair. 

Franklin brought down the lightning from the clouds, 
Morse dispatched it as a winged messenger of good tidings 
to all the nations, and Edison, Tesla, and others have further 
tamed this great destroyer until it has become a torch-bearer, 
decorator, and beast of burden. Great are these men of 
science. By the wires that cross the continents, and by 
the cables that span the seas, they have annihilated space 
and time and have made the antipodes close neighbors. 
With the electric light they have illumined the world and 
made daytime almost continuous. Through electricity as a 
motive power they have almost hushed forever the jingle 
of the horse-car bells, are substituting the force of falling 
waters for the heat of fiery furnaces, and now threaten to 
harness Niagara to forge-hammers in Buffalo and to sewing- 
machines in Chicago, and to make the whistle of the loco- 
motive a mere occasional echo of the age of steam. 
Through the phonograph they preserve the sound of a voice 
that is dead, and enable yesterday to hold converse with 
tomorrow. By the telautograph they promise to infuse 
into the hand that holds the pen in San Francisco the 
magical power of writing a letter in New York. By means 
of the telephone they have made the whole world a 



86 A MEDICAL ADDRESS 

whispering-gallery. While they have been performing these 
miracles, astronomers, holding their nightly vigils, have 
timed the motions of the stars, mapped their courses, and 
in the laboratory of the skies analyzed them into their com- 
ponent parts. 

But greater than these men are those other men of science, 
those physicians, practicing their healing art in every city, 
town, and village, whose genius has expended itself in 
lengthening life by preventing and by conquering disease. 
The mad dog, rushing through the crowded streets, no 
longer leaves a trail of death behind him. The serpent 
no longer revenges, with murderous fangs, the curse that 
has made him crawl forever upon his belly in the dust. 
Medical science has cures for such poisons. Aye, more : 
it can give surcease from pain, deaden physical nature to 
the surgeon's knife, and lull to slumber those who formerly 
had to lie awake all night and could not go to sleep at morn. 
Beneath its magic touch "suffering sighs itself to sleep and 
dreams." It can now unlock the jaws that formerly death 
alone could open; render an attack of smallpox no longer 
necessarily a sentence of death ; say to the dread diphtheria, 
"thou shalt not be a slayer of the innocents" ; and to the 
cholera, that unwelcome visitor from foreign lands, knock- 
ing at our doors for admission, "Thus far shalt thou come, 
and no farther; thou canst not enter here." 

The physician is gradually erasing the word "incurable" 
from his vocabulary, and stands no longer aghast and help- 
less before many diseases formerly thought fatal. He fears 
not to cut where drugs are without avail, and therefore 
countless human beings owe health and happiness to modern 
surgery. I am told that modern bacteriological researches 
have revolutionized surgery, and that the surgeon can now 
go almost anywhere in the human body, so long as he keeps 
everything clean and aseptic, remembering that there are 



A MEDICAL ADDRESS 87 

occasions when "cleanliness is better than godliness." Verily, 
and without boasting, can he exclaim, "Mortality alone 
defies me; age alone can conquer me." 

Today the world is singing anew the praises of Napoleon. 
Art and letters are intent on carving his name still deeper 
on the adamantine pyramid of Fame. The hero-worshipers 
of the nineteenth century are regilding the letters that spell 
the name "Bonaparte," and are hanging fresh wreaths of 
immortelles on the tomb beneath the glittering dome of the 
Invalides. Fire-worshipers, all of us, we kneel, blinded 
by the light of a meteor shooting through the heavens, that 
dazzles with its brilliancy and blasts with its heat, like a 
conflagration that destroys while it illumines. 

Think of the armies that followed and of the armies that 
fought Napoleon, whose whitening bones made a Golgotha 
of Europe from Paris to Moscow ; count, if you can, the 
victims of this great Frenchman's ambition, and compare 
them with the beneficiaries of the genius of that other great 
Frenchman, that eminent physician and scientist, whose dead 
body the President of France, as chief mourner of the 
nation, recently followed from the Pasteur Institute to the 
Cathedral of Notre Dame. Of him it has been eloquently 
said: "Dr. Pasteur was a great man. His was a life worth 
living, contributing to general biology the demonstration of 
the part that bacteria play, not only in pathological and 
physiological processes, but in the wider drama of evolu- 
tion ; to physicians, many a suggestive lesson in the etiology 
of diseases, and a series of bold experiments in preventive 
and curative inoculation; and to the surgeon, a stable 
foundation for antiseptic treatment. If all the armies of 
the world were to be massed together, their number would 
not equal the number of lives that have been saved by the 
aid of Dr. Pasteur's discoveries." 



88 A MEDICAL ADDRESS 

Napoleon's followers pointed to their scars, their maimed 
bodies, and their medals, and cried, "Vive Napoleon!" Pas- 
teur's followers point to sick beds abandoned and crutches 
thrown away, to health and strength restored, and to hope 
revived, and, reveling in the very luxury of living, cry, 
"Vive Pasteur!" 

Greater is he that buildeth a college or foundeth a hos- 
pital than he that conquereth a city. I would rather have 
founded the Pasteur Institute, and have discovered a cure 
for hydrophobia, than to have held the bridge at Lodi, and 
excelled both Caesar and Alexander in the art of war. I 
would rather have been the founder of the Woman's PIos- 
pital of the State of New York, have become the foremost 
surgeon of my country and of the world, and sleep in death 
beneath a monument erected in recognition of my services 
in the cause of science and mankind, than to have w^on the 
battle of Waterloo or worn the laurels that Childe Harold 
brought to England's greatest poet. I would rather have 
been Dr. J. Marion Sims than Wellington or Byron. I 
would rather have been the founder of this Medical Col- 
lege and Hospital, upon whose walls is inscribed this 
legend, "Erected by Levi Cooper Lane, physician and sur- 
geon, with money earned in his profession, and dedicated 
to suffering humanity and the healing art," than to be hon- 
ored with a tomb in Westminster Abbey and have Shak- 
speare write mine epitaph. Dr. Lane, standing in this 
building, can exclaim as did Sir Christopher Wren beneath 
the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral : ''Si meum monumcntum 
mderes, circumspice" — "If you would behold my monument, 
look around you." 

Great and noble is your calling, O men of medicine and 
surgery ! In ancient days the gladiators looked up from 
the sands of the arena and cried out, ''0, Caesar, nos mori- 
turi te salutamus," but they cried out in vain. Caesar stayed 



A MEDICAL ADDRESS 89 

not the fatal combat, and death followed the thrust of 
the sword. In modern days the sick and the suffering, 
struggling with disease, look up from their beds of pain 
and exclaim, ''Oj, Doctor, nos morituri te salutamus!" but 
they exclaim not in vain. Your skill and science stay the 
unequal combat, and, like the Divine Physician, you reply, 
"Rise, take up thy bed, and walk." 

When I recall the many hospitals in every land where 
the poor and needy receive the benefit of your advice and 
skill without cost and without price; when I realize that 
you give freely to Lazarus that for which Dives so will- 
ingly pays; that there are none so poor or lowly who can 
not, at this and other hospitals, have, for the asking, the 
attendance of the greatest of you, I bethink me of the 
Scriptures wherein it is written: "Then shall the King 
say unto them at his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my 
Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the 
foundation of the world: Inasmuch as ye have done it 
unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done 
it unto me." 

Gentlemen of the Medical Profession, both you of the 
Faculty of this College, eminent as professors and practi- 
tioners, and you, young ladies and gentlemen, just begin- 
ning your careers, I am glad to have had this opportunity 
of addressing you. From the abundance of my heart my 
mouth speaketh. I say unto you, and to you, ladies and 
gentlemen. Let the doctor magnify his office. To him we 
make confessions we withhold from the priest. In him 
we place a confidence we give not to the lawyer. He is 
our first acquaintance on our appearance in this world. 
Afterward, during the daily contest with the ills that flesh 
is heir to, it is he who points to healthy ways and steers 
us often safely between many a Scylla and Charybdis of 
disease and death. At last, when we are about to depart 



90 A MEDICAL ADDRESS 

this life, it is his kindly hand that holds the lantern to 
guide our tottering feet through the Valley of the Shadow 
of Death. His is the ear that first catches our natal cry, 
and last receives our dying sigh. The faithful sentinel 
at the door of the unknowable and at the gate of the 
unknown, birth and death his sentry-posts, his position 
entitles him to our respect for the responsibility he assumes, 
and to our affection for the kindly duties he performs. We 
often abuse and criticise him, and we do not always pay 
him; but we can not do without him, and we love him, 
for he comes to us, like the Angel of Mercy, "with healing 
in his wings." 

Let us, then, ever bear in mind these words of the ancient 
Hebrew: "My son, in thy sickness be not negligent, but 
pray unto the Lord, and He will make thee whole. Leave 
off from sin, and order thine hands aright, and cleanse thy 
heart from all wickedness. Give a sweet savor, and a 
memorial of fine flour, and a fat offering; then give place 
to the physician, for the Lord hath created him. Let him 
not go from thee, for thou hast need of him." 



CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 



(Delivered at a Banquet given to Chauneey M. Depew by the 
Union League Club of San Francisco, April 4, 1896.) 



MR. PRESIDENT and Gentlemen: When Mr. 
Depew began to talk about protection, I felt like the 
farmer when the strange guest said to him, during a lag 
in the conversation, "Now, a few words about the tariff." 
I was inclined not to listen. I have, however, in the last 
hour or so become a believer in protection; for if ever a 
man needed protection I need it now, and I need it badly. 

In the language of the Senator from Mr. Depew's own 
State, "I am a Democrat"; but there is only one of me, 
while there are about one hundred and fifty of you. My 
loneliness is, however, very much alleviated by the consola- 
tion that we Democrats are united this evening, while there 
seems to be quite a want of unanimity in your ranks, both 
in regard to candidates and measures. This gives me 
renewed hope for Democratic success, if it is still true 
that in union there is strength. And yet, I am not on this 
account so proud or so puffed up with vain glory that I 
can not dine with you and gladly contribute my mite in 
doing honor to this occasion. 

In listening to the eloquent and rather biting Repub- 
lican speeches that have been delivered this evening, I feel 
that I am the typical American spoken of by Bryce in his 
"American Commonwealth" — I can applaud a good speech, 
though I do not believe a thing the speaker says. 



92 CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 

We Democrats regret that there are some differences 
amongst you as to who is the best man in your party to 
be the next victim to Democratic infallibility and invinci- 
bility, because we know of so many Republicans eminently 
fitted by nature and experience to fill this role, with entire 
satisfaction to our party. We promise him, whoever he 
shall be, a magnificent funeral, and that our hymn of 
triumph shall be his funeral dirge. Verily, this shall come 
to pass, though he be New York's son, or Ohio's son, or 
Alli-son, and with all the "Chaunceys" apparently on his 
side. In this connection, let me say to you, somewhat in 
the words of the Bard of Avon, 

"Whilst like puffed and reckless partisans, 
Yourselves the primrose path of politics tread, 
Pray, wreck not your own Reed." 

I am glad to have this opportunity of hearing Mr. Depew. 
In order to be good and ready for this occasion, I have 
recently read all his speeches, from the one delivered to 
applauding steamboats, in honor of Bartholdi's genius and 
France's generosity, to the one spoken at the dedicatory 
exercises of the World's Fair, whose success was phenom- 
enal, although it had been predicted by him that it could 
not succeed unless held in the metropolis of the nation. 
I have learned from these speeches much of American his- 
tory and something of every other subject. I know these 
speeches by heart. If Mr. Depew has his cathode ray 
with him, he can turn it full upon me and read every 
speech he ever published. The perusal may be depressing 
to him, but it will do him good. He will unflinchingly 
resolve to cut down his chestnut tree as soon as he returns 
home. 

Dogberry has said that comparisons are odorous, but Mr. 
Depew will pardon me if, after this course in ancient and 
modern history, I compare him to one of the New York 



CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 93 

sky-scrapers. He is tall, sun-crowned; but he is built 
up by piling one story on top of another. But, gentlemen, 
he is like one of the sky-scrapers in another respect, he 
rises above the level of his surroundings. He himself, in 
speaking of another, has said : "The man who rises above 
the level in our metropolitan life becomes at once conspic- 
uous." I add to this : "He who stays above this level becomes 
immortal; and Chauncey Depew has stayed there." 

I have been introduced as the President of the Bohemian 
Club, a club that exchanges courtesies with the Lotus Club, 
of which Mr. Depew is a member. I, therefore, take this 
occasion to officially regret that my club did not have the 
honor and pleasure of entertaining Mr. Depew, and that 
he has been compelled to forego the distinction of being 
the guest of the Bohemian Club. This club is like Mr. 
Depew : there is but one of the kind in the world. It has 
entertained many men of great renown. It has dined 
Tomaso Salvini, Edwin Booth, and Henry Irving, those 
three of the world's greatest tragedians, whose transcend- 
ent dramatic genius found fittest expression only in Shak- 
speare's immortal plays. Its hospitality did not forget 
Joseph Jefferson, whose pathos and humor brought smiles 
and tears, like sunshine and rain at once. Amongst its 
guests have been Kalakaua, whose kingdom lay in summer 
seas, like emeralds set in sapphires; Hancock, who fought 
soldiers more successfully than he did politicians; George 
Augustus Sala, who elevated newspaper reporting to be one 
of the learned professions; Henry M. Stanley, the most 
fearless and renowned of explorers, who has not added to 
his fame by changing his nationality; Sir Edwin Arnold, 
whose genius illumined the night of poesy, not only with 
the "Light of Asia," but also with the "Light of the 
World" ; Ysaye, who touched his violin and nations stood 
entranced; and a host of others distinguished in art, let- 



94 CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 

ters, music, and song. Such is the roll of honor of 
Bohemia's hospitality. It would have rejoiced with exceed- 
ing joy to add thereto the name of that lawyer, statesman, 
and railroad president, noted equally for his legal ability, 
his forensic ability, his business ability, his sociability, and 
his amiability; of the most distinguished American; of 
an orator whose reputation for eloquence has so filled this 
land that every city with feelings of pride now styles its 
most gifted speaker a "Chauncey Depew." 

Sir, you are quoted as having asked a reporter at Los 
Angeles why everything in the West was for sale. There 
are two things in California that are not for sale — our 
welcome and our hospitality. These, sir, are without price, 
and can not be purchased with all the wealth of Ormus 
or of Ind. We give them once to the stranger within 
our gates. We give them twice to the stranger who has 
become a friend; and that man we are glad to make our 
friend to whom, as you have so truly said: "Life is one 
perpetual enjoyment, in expanding opportunities, in enjoy- 
able pursuits, and in steadfast friends," and who, when past 
the meridian of life, can say, "After all, the best things 
in this world are its friendships and its opportunities." To 
such a one, and, sir, thou art the man, we say: 

"Of itself our Garden shuts its gate 
On him that's hard, cold, uncompassionate, 
But opens wide its alleys green and still 
To Sesame of Love and Fair Goodwill." 

Thou, sir, hast the Open Sesame — use it when and as often 
as thou desirest. 



'STEAM AND ELECTRICITY, THE ANNIHILA- 
TORS OF SPACE AND TIME" 



(Delivered at a dinner given by Mr. Huntington in San Fran- 
cisco, May 5, iSgy, to the officials of the 
Southern Pacific Company.) 



MR. CHAIRMAN : Rapid transit, both of mind and 
matter, is the magician of the last quarter of the 
century, and his two chiefs are the engineer at the throttle 
and the telegraph operator at his keys. 

During these final years of the nineteenth century a great 
battle between mighty antagonists is apparently drawing 
to a close. Steam and Electricity are annihilating Space 
and Time, making the Antipodes close neighbors, and caus- 
ing the word "remote" to become obsolete. In fact, the 
only place that is now remote is Oakland after the last 
boat. The interior of Siberia and China used to be far 
away, but the building of the railway across Siberia is 
daily bringing this country nearer and nearer to us, con- 
verting this prison into a principality. The extension of 
this railway across China to Port Arthur and Pekin will 
bring the Orient within the sphere of the Occident. At 
the whistle of the locomotive the gates closed by super- 
stition will stand ajar and the great wall of China will 
crumble into dust. Before the end of the twentieth century 
through trains from Paris to Pekin will settle the Chinese 
question and redraw the political map of Europe and Asia. 

One year ago an electrical exhibition was held in the 
city of New York to celebrate the opening of the Niagara 
Falls electrical power enterprise, when Dr. Depew sent a 



96 STEAM AND ELECTRICITY 

message round the world. Just about that time I went to 
the theatre and sat listening to the homely wit and philos- 
ophy of some simple Athenian tradesmen, to the sighs and 
vows of some Grecian lovers, to the songs of fairies, and 
to the airy nothings of Shakspeare's wit that make up 
"A Midsummer Night's Dream." One sentence particu- 
larly caught my ear. Oberon was planning revenge upon 
his queen, Titania, and to Puck he said: 

"The herb I showed thee once, 
The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid, 
Will make or man or woman madly dote 
Upon the next live creature that it sees. 
Fetch me this herb; and be thou here again 
Ere the leviathan can swim a league." 

To this Puck replied : 
"I'll put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes." 

Shakspeare was not prophesying. His genius ranged 
almost the gamut of eternity. He remembered all that 
had been, and seemed able to foretell almost all that would 
be. No curtain separated to him the past from the pres- 
ent ; no closed doors concealed the future from his gaze. 
But, in this instance, he was not of serious intent. He 
was reveling in the delights of Fairyland, and his pen 
sported with its improbabilities. Only a fairy could per- 
form the impossible, and therefore only a fairy could put 
a girdle round about the world in forty minutes. How 
Shakspeare's ghost, if he still stalks abroad, must be aston- 
ished to find this idle boast become a prophecy, and at 
this New York exhibition Puck's accomplishment repeated 
by Chauncey Depew, a total stranger both to Puck and 
Shakspeare. 

Franklin is said to have snatched the lightning from the 
clouds, and trained it to follow lightning-rod lines of safety 
to a quiet grave. He taught us that lightning is electricity. 



STEAM AND ELECTRICITY 97 

He did not dream, however, that every torrent of rushing 
waters, every cascade of falling waters, every cataract of 
roaring waters, was a god that could produce the lightning, 
whose witchcraft, guided by man along wire and cable, 
o'er land and sea, should put a girdle of electricity round 
about the earth in fifty minutes, carrying upon the noise- 
less wings of the telegraph, with the rapidity of thought, 
messages of peace and good will to all nations. 

When from the Exposition Hall in New York in the 
month of May, 1896, Depew's message started upon its 
tour round the world, when the eloquent words of this 
American orator, spoken in our English tongue, with the 
skies their sounding board and all the world their whispering 
gallery, were instantly heard in every tongue o'er all the 
earth, crossing and recrossing every continent in their flight, 
and echoed back in New York in fifty minutes, we might 
have truly exclaimed : "The sons of man are as one family, 
and there is but one god, one country, one people." 

A few days ago the States of this Republic sent repre- 
sentatives by land and the nations of the world sent repre- 
sentatives by sea to do honor to the hero of Appomattox, 
who sleeps where rolls the Hudson, the fire of whose mili- 
tary genius fused these States into the nation that glorifies 
him today. When he laid down the sword, and war's 
alarms were heard no more, steam as well as electricity took 
up his work, and the railroad has since brought so close 
together distant States and Territories, cities, towns, vil- 
lages, and sections, has so linked ocean to ocean, and moun- 
tain to sea, that this country is now solidified, a homogeneous 
whole. State lines have been obliterated and the doctrine 
of States' rights has been settled not alone by the sword of 
Grant, but also by the Columbian Express, the Overland 
Flyer, and the Sunset Limited. 

What is the greatest blessing of all these miracles of 



98 STEAM AND ELECTRICITY 

modern science, the superlative advantage accruing from 
this annihilation of space and time, the crowning glory of 
this rapid girdling of the earth? That the voice of the 
money-changer in the Wall-Street Temple of Wealth may 
be heard simultaneously in the Chicago Board of Exchange, 
and his words flashed instantly to the remotest market of 
the world? That San Francisco, New York, London, St. 
Petersburg, Pekin may be near neighbors? That this con- 
federation of States might become the American nation? 
These are not the greatest blessings these wonders work. 
This blessing is found in the rapid transmission of thought, 
bringing every student of science into one laboratory, every 
philosopher into one sanctum, every scholar into one library, 
every worshiper into one temple and before one shrine. 

Every gladiator today contests in one arena, every actor 
appears upon one stage, every teacher has one schoolroom, 
and that the world, and the spectators, the audience, the 
pupils are all those that dwell therein. 

It would seem as if man had acquired the attributes of 
divinity, and was become omnipresent and omniscient. 

Niagara whispered its roaring into the streets of New 
York, and started on its course an electrical current born 
of its waters, muscled with their strength, and illumined by 
their prismatic splendor, and in San Francisco, Augusta, 
St. Paul, and New Orleans this current found voice in 
the simultaneous discharge of cannon fired by this one 
distant gunner. The officials of the Tennessee Centennial 
wired to Washington the signal that all was ready, and 
the President of the United States, at his desk in the White 
House, by the mere pressure of a button, and in the twink- 
ling of an eye started the wheels to turning at Nashville, 
and opened the great Southern Exposition. An American 
athlete won a crown of olive beneath the shadows of the 
Parthenon, and the plaudits of his countrymen were heard 



STEAM AND ELECTRICITY 99 

ere the echoes of the cheers of the Athenians died out 
mid the ruins of the temple sacred to Minerva. With the 
same rapidity, I fear, the booming of the Turkish guns will 
soon echo from the rocky heights of the Acropolis to every 
land where art is worshiped and love of the beautiful 
finds lodgment in the soul. The crown of Peter the Great 
was scarcely placed upon the head of Nicholas, nor had 
the sun gone down upon the day of his coronation ere all 
the world was reading of pageantry surpassing aught 
recorded in the Occident or dreamed of in the Orient. With 
equal immediateness will the wires soon flash from zone to 
zone accounts of the Diamond Jubilee of that aged Queen 
whom every Anglo-Saxon will ever respect as a type of 
noblest womanhood. Pasteur's genius discovered a cure for 
hydrophobia, and almost instantly the glad news sped from 
continent to continent, and a song of thanksgiving went up 
in every land. 

The wisdom of philosophers, the learning of scholars, the 
eloquence of orators, the songs of poets, the inventions of 
scientists, become now the immediate property of all man- 
kind, and culture disseminates in every land as equally 
and quickly as do the rays of the sun, making rapid and 
general the upward progress of all peoples. 

The sufferings of the Cubans fighting for independence, 
the humiliation and defeat of the Greeks battling for the 
cross, the sorrows of France over yesterday's terrible holo- 
caust of so many of her noblest wives, mothers, and daugh- 
ters whose pitiful death has made all Paris a mausoleum 
of charred and mangled female loveliness, hung immor- 
telles o'er every door and crepe on coronets, and draped 
the tricolor in black, are known instantly in most distant 
lands and find immediate sympathy in every clime, and 
this prompt universal sympathy will eventually bring uni- 
versal friendship, peace on earth, good will among men. 



THE WOMAN VICTORIA 



(Delivered at the Diamond Jubilee Banquet, in honor of Her 

Majesty Queen Victoria, Palace Hotel, 

San Francisco, June 21, iSgy.) 



MR. CHAIRMAN : It is said that "no man ever rose 
to the dizzy heights of fame but felt the touch of 
some good woman's palm." This would seem true of nations 
as well as individuals, taking England as an example. 

I am requested to speak of Victoria as a woman. It is 
impossible to speak of her as a woman and not as a ruler, 
because, from my education, I recognize the two words as 
synonymous. "Woman in her weakness is yet the strongest 
force upon the earth. She is the helm of all things human. 
. . . She rules the world." 

I shall speak of Victoria as queen, as the queen of queens, 
in whose diadem there glitters a Koh-i-noor plucked from 
the sands of the river of life, a gem of purest ray serene, 
the jewel of noblest womanhood. 

There have been many queens of England, queens con- 
sort and queens regent, and around their names legend 
and lore, fancy and fact, have twined garlands of romance 
and woven a web of strangely intermingled threads of 
fiction and history. Tragedy has marked many of them 
for her own, and Fate has made them miserable or happy 
like the rest of the daughters of the children of men, giving 
wreaths of roses to some and crowns of thorns to others, 
necklacing the throats of some with pearls and blood- 
encircling the frail necks of others with the mark of the 
headsman's axe. 



THE WOMAN VICTORIA 101 

From Guenever to Victoria, what a procession of women 
to whose happiness and prosperity Englishmen throughout 
the centuries have loyally raised their glasses and drunk 
"To the Queen!" 

Methinks I can see King Arthur and Launcelot and 
Sir Gawaine and Sir Bors and Sir Galahad and the rest 
of those gallant knights when, in the month of May, lo, 
these many years ago. Queen Guenever "called unto her 
Knights of the Table Round and gave them warning that 
early upon the morrow she would ride on maying into the 
woods and fields beside Westminster." Methinks the sweet- 
est memory that time brings down from out those early 
years of England's history is that of the woman Guenever, 
rather than of Arthur's queen. 

Centuries pass, and I see "a fair vestal throned by the 
West," the virgin queen, Elizabeth, who for forty-five 
years held prosperous sway o'er England's destinies, who 
laid the foundation of England's greatness by building ships 
instead of hiring them, earning from strangers the title of 
"Queen of the Seas," who held her sceptre like a man, and 
governed like a king, and yet who spent much of her time 
like a woman in receiving, encouraging, and rejecting suit- 
ors. But whether she was swayed most by the frailties of 
her mother, poor Anne Boleyn, or by the strength and 
cruelty of her father, Henry VIII, and though her reign 
began 'mid pestilence and famine, with a people starving, 
an empty treasury, a debased coinage, and a kingdom not 
especially respected abroad, ere she died the wreck of the 
Spanish Armada strewed her coasts, and England had 
gained a place of vantage in the front rank of nations from 
which there has been no step backward. In Elizabeth the 
queen triumphed over the woman, to England's great 
advantage. 



102 THE WOMAN VICTORIA 

Over two hundred years go by, during which time English 
armies won at Waterloo and stood guard at St. Helena 
over him w^hose military genius had almost conquered the 
world and seemed omnipotent, during which time in this 
Western world this new American nation arose, born of 
England's loins, and endowed with English strength and 
English love of liberty, and there is born in England a 
royal infant, by name Victoria, who "in her cradle prom- 
ised upon her land a thousand blessings which time has 
brought to ripeness," and who has proven herself "a pattern 
to all princes living with her and all that shall succeed." 

Guenever is remembered only as the woman, and Elizabeth 
best as the queen, but Victoria will be remembered equally 
as w^oman and queen. Beginning her reign just after the 
passage of the "Reform Bill" whereby the great liberty- 
loving middle class became active governmental factors, she 
has made these suffragists pillars of the throne and the 
mainstay of the monarchy, and this she has accomplished 
as much by the personal loyalty her womanhood has inspired 
as by the respect her great wisdom has commanded. 

English life is essentially home life, and her home life 
has pleased her people, and elevated the moral tone of 
the nation. It has convinced them that an Englishman's 
home is not only his castle but also a sanctuary wherein 
the wife and mother is highpriestess, and thereby has won 
for her the support of the women of her realm, a support 
that has the enthusiasm of a religion, and that has added 
to patriotism the homage of personal devotion. 

I consider the English government one of the best that 
today attempts to guide the destinies of men. It is essen- 
tially a government of law, of law ably, honestly, impar- 
tially, surely, quickly administered. It is a government of 
force, but using only sufficient to preserve order at home 
and command respect abroad. This government, republican 



THE WOMAN VICTORIA 103 

in spirit and monarchial in form, and aptly styled the 
''Crowned Republic," owes its present stability more to the 
woman Victoria than to all its Gladstones and Disraelis. 
The personal loyalty to the queen as the first and best 
of English daughters, wives, and mothers, who has made 
the throne a family hearthstone, runs like a thread of gold 
from continent to continent, through her kingdoms and 
colonies of every race and clime, and binds together into 
one great empire the multitudinous peoples who acknowl- 
edge English sway. It is love of the woman Victoria that 
today is the bulwark of England's queen, and, therefore, 
we say to her, in the beautiful lines of Tennyson, 

"May all love, 
His love, unseen but felt, o'er-shadow thee, 
The love of all thy sons encompass thee, 
The love of all thy daughters cherish thee, 
The love of all thy people comfort thee, 
Till God's love set thee at his side again." 

As an American I am glad of the opportunity of saying 
these things about Victoria. She is queen of Great Britain 
by inheritance, empress of India through Act of Parlia- 
ment and the genius of Disraeli, but highest exemplar among 
women by acknowledgment of the civilized world. 

For sixty years she has been upon the throne, as maiden, 
wife, mother, and widow, standing ever in the searchlight 
of modern criticism, sharing her happiness with her people, 
and in her grief receiving their sympathy (nor did she fail 
to extend her sympathy to the widows of our martyred 
presidents when they, like her, were compelled to walk 
their lonely ways through the Valley of the Shadow of 
Death). During her reign she has seen her people double 
in number, and her kingdom grow in extent and power 
and wealth and culture to dimensions beyond ambition's 
dream. She has seen steam and electricity annihilate space 



104 THE WOMAN VICTORIA 

and time, and make immediate the exchange of royal 
blessings and loyal congratulations between London and 
earth's remotest corners. She has seen her government 
complete its change from a personal government to the peo- 
ple's government, of them and for them, and yet retain its 
throne. She has seen and helped along a still more impor- 
tant change, the making of equality before the law a practice 
instead of a theory. In the eloquent words of another, "She 
found law dear and she will leave it cheap ; she found it a 
sealed book, she will leave it a living letter; found it the 
patrimony of the rich, and will leave it the inheritance of the 
poor; found it the two-edged sword of craft and oppres- 
sion, and will leave it the staif of honesty and the shield 
of innocence." 

"Well done, good and faithful servant," let all her sub- 
jects say. 

I, therefore, gladly do all honor to Victoria, who to 
Elizabeth's title, "Queen of the Seas," has added her own, 
"Mother of Her People." In her honor, and because of 
the world's appreciation of her womanhood, wifehood, 
motherhood, queenhood, at this Diamond Jubilee there will 
encircle the earth, following the sun and keeping company 
W'ith the hours, one continuous and unbroken acclaim, "God 
save Queen Victoria." 

Here in California nature joins in this celebration, and 
in the beauty and perfume of the Victoria Regia now bloom- 
ing in splendor in Golden Gate Park offers up the incense 
of the lily to its royal namesake, Victoria Regina. 



THE FIRST RIVET 



(Delivered at the Dinner following the Launching of the Battle- 
ship Wisconsin, Union Iron Works, San Fran- 
cisco, November 26, 1898.) 



LADIES AND Gentlemen: A year or more ago I 
was present when the first rivet of the Wisconsin was 
driven. An Americal Admiral and an American Gen- 
eral attempted to drive this rivet. It was a very poor 
attempt, and I should not care to go to sea in her if these 
two gentlemen had been the only riveters employed. I am, 
however, assured by the builders that that first-rivet busi- 
ness was only a fake, and that the rest of the rivets were 
driven by the same skilled workmen whose honest and dur- 
able workmanship gave beauty to the San Francisco, fleetness 
to the Olympia, and to the Oregon beauty, fleetness, strength, 
and all that goes to make the perfect ship. 

This morning the Wisconsin made her initial plunge under 
the most favorable auspices. She took the tide at the flood, 
and that, you know, in the affairs of ships as well as men, 
leads on to fortune. Furthermore, she was launched in 
the same waters that first laved the keel of the Oregon, 
and, bone of the same bone and flesh of the same flesh, as 
it were, nurtured and reared by the same skillful hands, 
she must be destined to a great career in following in the 
wave-steps of her great predecessor. Entering the Amer- 
ican navy just when this nation has passed the parting of 
the ways, and has ceased to be a possible and has become 
an actual Great Power, receiving her baptism in the waters 



106 THE FIRST RIVET 

of the Pacific Ocean that is to be the "theatre of the 
world's great hereafter," the Wisconsin will be rushed into 
prominence, the prestige of her builders giving her imme- 
diate rank among the steel-girt leviathans of the deep. 

Before the recent war Captain Mahan wrote "Steam 
navies have as yet made no history which can be quoted as 
decisive in its teaching." Were he today to rewrite his 
book he would say that the American steam navy at Manila 
and Santiago made history that will for ages be quoted as 
decisive in its teachings, and in letters of gold upon the 
pages of this history he would write the names of those 
two California-built ships, the Olympia and the Oregon, 
and his prophetic pen would predict equal glory for the 
Wisconsin. 

Ladies and gentlemen of Wisconsin, you have come a 
long distance to honor the ship that bears the name of 
your State. But you are not in a strange country, nor in 
a foreign port. You are at home, and we Californians 
have but kept your house in readiness for your home- 
coming. The flag that here is fanned by the breezes of 
the Pacific is the same that unfurls its silken folds to the 
winds that blow off Lake Michigan, and, here as there, in 
its blue sky shines the star Wisconsin, mingling its rays with 
those of more than forty others to illumine the world with 
the light of freedom and humanity. 

It was an inspired idea that suggested the names of the 
States as the names for battleships, and the navy in its 
battleships so named is typical of a Union invincible and 
indivisible. The Maine and the Texas, the Illinois and 
the Kentucky, the Wisconsin and the Alabama, the Massa- 
chusetts, the Oregon, the Indiana, the Iowa, and the Ohio, 
named after States of the North and South, are manned 
indiscriminately by Southron and Northron, who know no 
section or State, but only their common country, and who 



THE FIRST RIVET 107 

make the victories of each ship the glorious heritage of all 
the States. 

A battleship represents in its name the pride of some 
particular State, in its officers and men the pride of many 
States, and in its flag and fortunes the pride of the Nation. 
The Virginian on the deck of the Wisconsin, the Alabamian 
on the deck of the Maine, the Wisconsan on the deck of 
the Texas, forgetting that the State of its nativity was 
ever at war with the name-state of his ship, remembering 
only that now all the States are one people, with one flag, 
one army and one navy, astounds and will ever astound 
the nations by his courage, skill, seamanship, marksmanship, 
and by his humanity. 

As the citizen of each State loves not his own State less 
in today loving more the name Oregon, cheering its every 
mention, so in the future will he laud and love the name 
Wisconsin, when the battleship so christened today from 
the lips of one of Wisconsin's fairest daughters has proven 
by her prowess that she was not rocked in vain in the 
cradle where once lay the Oregon. 



POETS AND POETRY 



(Delivered at the Unitarian Club Dinner, April 27, 1898, 
San Francisco. ) 



MR. PRESIDENT, Ladies and Gentlemen, Espe- 
cially Ladies : A very high official of this club 
cautioned me to bear in mind in preparing my speech that 
you women wanted to be talked to as if you were men. I 
promised to bear this in mind, and to act accordingly, but 
I can not. If there is any merit in what I am about to 
say, it is because I anticipated, in its preparation, the inspira- 
tion of your presence. Could I talk to you women as if 
you were men, there would be no poetry in me, and you 
would not care to listen to me ; and, when I am so old that 
I can talk to women as if they were men, then shall I pray 
to the Lord, Nunc Dimittas, Domine ! 

Among the many things that an orator should know, the 
most important is to know when to stop. Like a railroad, 
he should have terminal facilities. I promise you that I 
am well provided in this respect ; I know when to stop. 

Among the many things that an orator should not do is 
to begin a speech by talking about himself. This rule I 
am compelled to violate, owing to the unusualness of my 
surroundings. I am accustomed to speech-making in 
Bohemia, where the auditors seek only entertainment, which 
must either amuse or thrill. This evening I find myself 
in a more serious company. My colleagues are a learned 
professor and two reverend clergymen, and I am put for- 
ward to blaze the way along which they shall tread. I am 



POETS AND POETRY 109 

afraid I shall be of no service to them, as I am apt to try 
to mark the trees too high up, on limbs I can not reach, 
and overlook their broad trunks that are close at hand. I 
shall therefore simply endeavor to point to brighter worlds, 
and let these gentlemen lead the way, myself a willing and 
humble follower. 

I shall not attempt to philosophize upon poets, or to dis- 
cuss learnedly the nature or mission of poesy. 

"Who shall expound the mystery of the lyre? 
In far retreats of elemental mind 
Obscurely comes and goes 

The imperative breath of song, that, as the wind, 
Is trackless, and oblivious whence it blows. 
Demand of lilies wherefore they are white. 
Extort her crimson secret from the rose, 
But ask not the Muse that she disclose 
The meaning of the riddle of her might." 

I shall simply do a little rhapsodizing, string a few pearls 
upon a slender thread of my own spinning, and talk to you 
in the very words of the poets, quoting in defense of my 
plagiarizing these lines from Kipling: 

"When 'Omer smote his blooming lyre, 
He'd 'eard men sing by land and sea ; 

And what he thought he might acquire, 
'E went and took, the same as me. 

The market girls and fisherwomen. 
The shepherds and the sailors, too, 

They 'eard the old songs turn up again, 
But kept it quiet — same as you ! 

They knew he stole ; 'e knew they knowed, 
They didn't tell, or make a fuss. 

But winked at 'Omer down the road, 
And 'e winked back — the same as us." 



110 POETS AND POETRY 

Poets are dreamers ; but dreamers are the only ones who 

"Hail the mystic bird that brings 
News from the inner courts of things, 
And hear the bubbling of the springs 
That feed the world." 

Poets are dreamers, but 

"A dreamer Hves forever, 
And a toiler dies in a day." 

Poets are dreamers, and dreamers are called the useless 
ones. 

"Useless ? Ay, for measure ; 
Roses die. 
But their breath gives pleasure — 
God knows why." 

The poet's mission is to give pleasure. 

"Poets should not reason ; 

Let them sing ! 
Argument is treason — 
Bells should ring. 

He must use deduction 

Who must preach; 
He may praise instruction 

Who must teach. 

But the poet duly 

Fills his part 
When the song bursts truly 

From his heart. 

For no purpose springing. 

For no pelf, 
He must do the singing 

For itself. 

Not in lines austerely 

Let him build ; 
Not the surface merely 

Let him gild. 



POETS AND POETRY 111 

Fearless, uninvited, 

Like a spring, 
Opal words, inlighted. 

Let him sing." 

The poet's reward is love. 

"Nor cross nor ribbon, but all others high above. 
Others win these glittering symbols — he has earned 
the people's love," 

The poet's reward is immortality, and his fame is "self- 
embalmed in amber of eternal rhyme" : 

"The seasons change, the winds they shift and veer, 
The grass of yesteryear 

Is dead, the birds depart, the groves decay; 
Empires dissolve and peoples disappear. 

Song passes not away. 
Captains and conquerors leave a little dust. 

And kings a dubious legend of their reign. 
The swords of Caesars, they are less than rust, 

The poet doth remain." 

The Muse at his birth "kisses warm immortality into his 
lips," he sings for all eternity, and his voice is the "voice 
of everywhere." 

This is true not only of those great poets who "touch 
their harps and nations stand entranced," of 

"A Shakespeare flashing 

O'er the whole of man's domain 
The splendor of his cloudless soul 

And perfect brain ; 
A Keats to Grecian gods allied, 
Clasping all Beauty as his bride ; 
A Shelly soaring, dim-described, 

Above Time's throng, 
And heavenward hurling, wild and wide, 

His spear of song; 
A lonely Wordsworth, from the crowd 
Half hid in light, half veiled in cloud ; 
A sphere-born Milton, cold and proud." 



112 POETS AND POETRY 

It is true of those lowlier ones, who see "what all men 
see — no more — in heaven and earth," "mere dreamers of the 
common dreams," "fishes in familiar streams," who "share 
the transitory gleams that all pursue," but on whose "lips 
the eternal themes again are new." 

Poetry must be felt, not reasoned out. It should thrill 
the soul, not disturb the understanding. It is the spirit 
of divinity voiced by humanity, it is humanity's language 
of the soul. It is heart-beats expressed in verse, it is soul- 
throbs resonant in song, it is life crystallized in rhythm. 

"For lo ! Creation's self is one great choir, 
And what is nature's order but the rhyme 
Whereto the world keeps time?" 

Poetry is the language of the heart, whereby every pas- 
sion finds musical expression; Hope tripping lightly in 
Iambic measure along its lyric pathway to fruition ; Despair 
dragging heavily in spondeic movement along its epic road 
to failure; Love flying with verse-winged feet to the object 
of its adoration; and Patriotism in battle hymns inspiring 
soldiers to fight and die for their flag, in national anthems 
rousing the people to the highest pitch of patriotic enthu- 
siasm, in times like these making manifest to Americans in 
the singing of "America" and "The Star- Spangled Ban- 
ner" how much they love their country, and at all times in 
verse giving to heroism rhythmical immortality. 

Poetry is the language of nature. 

"The poem well the poet knows 
In ambush lurks where'er he goes, 
Lisps hidden in each wind that blows. 

Laughs in each wave, 
Sighs from the bosom of the rose, 

Wails from the grave." 



POETS AND POETRY 113 

These are the unsung songs with which nature is musical, 
and the poet is nature's minstrel. 

"Songs were born before the singer ; like white 
souls awaiting birth, 
They abide the chosen bringer of their melody 
to earth." 

Let all the world reverence the poet ! He comes to us a 
song-burdened messenger, bringing to us songs hitherto 
unsung to mortal ears. He has been within the pearly gates 
and heard the angels sing. He has soared among the stars 
and listened to the music of the spheres. He has worshiped 
in nature's star-lit cathedrals, and heard the choir invisible 
sing the oratorios of wind and wave, the requiems of the 
forests, the anthems of the seas, the lullabies that soothe 
to sleep the blushing rose, the golden poppy, and the blue- 
eyed violet, and the hymns the lark heralds to the morning 
star. 

Let all the world bow to the poet ! He is, it is true, a 
slave of beauty, but 

"The eternal slaves of beauty 
Are the masters of the world." 



THE MAN BEHIND THE GUN' 



(Delivered at a dinner given by Mr. Huntington to the ofUcials 

of the Southern Pacific Railroad, San 

Francisco, May 13, 1899.) 



MR. CHAIRMAN and Gentlemen : The Toastmas- 
ter gave me the choice of subjects between "The 
Man Behind the Gun" and "The Woman Behind the Man 
Behind the Gun." I concluded that as the man behind the 
gun had a full day's job in dodging the bullets of the 
man in front of the gun, it was taking him at an unfair 
disadvantage to put a woman behind him, and I therefore 
eliminated the woman. The White Man's Burden is heavy 
enough as it is. 

Through all the years since time was young the warrior 
has been the hero whom mankind has deified, crowned, and 
most belaureled. The man behind the gun has ever received 
the people's idolatry, while he who has searched among the 
heavens and revealed to man some wandering star, or he 
whose eyes have penetrated into the mysteries of creation 
and discovered the secret of birth and death, and the kinship 
of all life, or he whose skill has found an antidote for dis- 
ease, and given to humanity a conqueror of pain, may walk 
unheeded along the public highway, unacclaimed by blast of 
trumpet or beat of drum or the hosannas of the throng; 
and so it will ever be. 

In this land of ours the places we most delight to honor 
with monuments of brass and stone are the battlefields 
where our soldiers fought and fell; the deeds that most 
inspire our songs and singers are those our soldiers do ; and 



"THE MAN BEHIND THE GUN" 115 

it needs no great gift of prophecy to foretell that the names 
of Washington and Grant and Dewey will be as familiar 
as household words when those who wrote our laws or sang 
our songs or sat in our seats of justice will be known only 
to the learned few. This is because patriotism is the 
strongest emotion of the human breast, and war alone 
enkindles it. 

Of all the peoples we are the most warlike, the quickest 
to resolve ourselves into vast armies, the most indomitable 
in a determination to conquer when enlisted, the most at 
home when behind the gun. There have we prospered. 

The man behind the gun cleared this land of savages 
who would have massacred our ancestors and kept this 
country a wilderness, and he likewise drove from this land 
the foreigner who would have enslaved our Revolutionary 
sires and kept this country a subject land. 

The man behind the gun vanquished in battle the 
descendants of Cortez, planted our flag in the halls of the 
Montezumas, and added California to our galaxy of stars. 

The man behind the gun banished slavery from this land, 
and cemented with his blood these States into a Union 
indivisible forever. 

The man behind the gun opened the waves to engulf 
the Spanish Armadas, climbed the heights of El Caney, 
and waded the swamps of Luzon, and emblazoned the 
courage and invincibility of the American soldier on glory's 
proudest heights, planted Freedom's Banner on Morro 
Castle, rebaptized humanity with the blood of heroes, and 
on the first day of May, 1898, proclaimed to the world 
from the cannon's mouth that the United States had arrived 
at man's estate, had come into its inheritance among the 
nations, and that henceforth from Manila its voice would 
be heard throughout the Orient. 



116 "THE MAN BEHIND THE GUN" 

Dewey, the immortal, the man behind the gun, has ful- 
filled prophecy. Thirty years ago Seward predicted that 
the Pacific Ocean would some day be the chief theatre of 
the world's great hereafter. This prophecy is in its fulfill- 
ment, this hereafter is at hand. Its day is dawning, its 
morning is advancing, and ere its sun has reached its 
meridian the Pacific Ocean will be the arena on which 
will be fought and won the struggle for the trade and the 
empire of the nations. Ages ago, when Greece and Persia 
fought for mastery at Salamis, when Roman triremes ruled 
the waves, when Anthony fled from Actium, lured by love 
to defeat and to death in Cleopatra's arms, when Turkish 
might was humbled at Lepanto, when Venice was queen 
of the seas, the Mediterranean centered man's ambitions, 
hopes, and fears. During the succeeding centuries o'er the 
Atlantic shone the star of destiny, emblazoning Nelson's 
fame. But now this star, the Morning Star of the twen- 
tieth century, bespangles the skies that dome the Pacific 
Ocean, lighting up with its earliest rays the Golden Gate 
that opens up our city to its queenship of the future, and 
gilding with a lustre that ne'er will fade the letters that 
spell the name of Dewey. 

All hail to the man behind the gun! When money- 
getting was making selfishness supreme amongst us, subor- 
dinating public spirit to private gain, deafening our ears 
to the cause of humanity, and making patriotism a thing 
for sneer or jest, the report of his gun aroused our patriotic 
spirit, made us no longer ashamed to stand up and sing 
aloud the anthem to our flag, revitalized the supremacy of 
the nation over the individual, and, like England's drum- 
beat, following the sun and keeping company with the 
hours, has encircled the earth with one continuous and 
unbroken acclaim to the power, might, and majesty of this 
Republic. 



"THE MAN BEHIND THE GUN" 117 

We need never fear the man behind the gun. I do not 
believe that you can ever enlist from the common schools 
of this country an army from whom any military system 
or discipline can eradicate that spirit of independence and 
love of liberty that has made this Republic a power for 
good among the nations. 

All honor, then, to the man behind the gun ! He deserves 
to be, above all others, the hero of all mankind, because 
he offers and too often gives his life for his fellow-beings. 
In every zone, in every land, his blood has crimsoned sea 
and sand for the cause he defended. 

"On Fame's eternal camping-ground 
His silent tents are spread, 
And Glory guards with solemn round 
The bivouac of the dead," 

who died behind the gun. 



WHAT HAS ART DONE FOR CIVILIZATION? 



(Delivered at the twenty-second Annual Dinner of the Chit-Chat 
Club of San Francisco, November 9, 1896.) 



MR. CHAIRMAN, and Gentlemen of the Chit- 
Chat Club : I feel that I am appearing before you 
under false pretenses. I have been requested by the Chair- 
man of your committee to talk to you this evening upon 
art, upon the supposition, in his mind, that I know some- 
think about it. I have for years studied law, and I have 
found the law a very jealous and very exacting mistress. 
To art I have had but little time to give, and I confess 
my ignorance in this regard. The only reason that sug- 
gests itself to me as an explanation of my selection is 
that I am the President of the San Francisco Art Asso- 
ciation. 

My theme, I am told, is "What Has Art Done for Civ- 
ilization?" Rather it should be, "What Has Civilization 
Done for Art?" Is not art the pictorial, sculpturesque, 
musical side of civilization? Is civilization possible with- 
out art? What is civilization? What is art? 

Emerson defines civilization as "a certain degree of prog- 
ress from the rudest state in which man is found." This 
progress has traveled along the turnpike of the centuries, 
up hill and down dale, climbing now over dizzy heights, 
descending now into deep abysses, trailing now across level, 
dusky, treeless plains, and again slowly ascending moun- 
tain ranges till it once more nears the clouds. 



WHAT HAS ART DONE FOR CIVILIZATION? HQ 

Art is variously defined. All writers, however, agree that 
"The purpose of art is the presentation of truth in the 
form of beauty." 

Some one has said that "The mission of art is to speak 
to the soul while pleasing the eye." Another has aptly 
written that "Sculpture, painting, music, literature, taken 
together, are an expression of the human spirit realizing 
itself and its surroundings in the language of beauty" — 
that "Art involves two essential things, skill and beauty, 
and that there must be in art the evidence of human skill 
and the formation of a beautiful thing by it." 

Art, therefore, is civilization expressing itself in the love 
of the beautiful. It idealizes life, and elevates mankind. 
It is the soul finding expression in the skill of the hand, 
and in the appreciation of the eye. Ruskin, Taine, or 
some other has truly said that great art requires all of your 
soul for its enjoyment, that it quickens the life of the soul, 
requires you to give yourself to its contemplation, becomes 
a part of your soul, and remains there an illumining, ele- 
vating, refining influence, and that "Commerce with the 
beautiful does not exist only at the moment of seeing or 
hearing, but that that is the moment of storage." Our 
minds become picture-galleries or shells within whose 
sinuous confines sweet harmonies linger. 

Our California poet, Edward Rowland Sill, has thus 
expressed in verse this last thought : 

"If men but knew the mazes of the brain, 
And all its crowded pictures, they would need 
No Louvre or Vatican ; behind our brows 
Intricate galleries are built, whose walls 
Are rich with all the splendors of a life." 

Artistic keenness means appreciation of beauty, and 
appreciation of beauty is the soul's opportunity. 



120 WHAT HAS ART DONE FOR CIVILIZATION? 

What is the standard by which we estimate beauty? I 
eliminate music, as that would need a lecture by itself. I 
exclude architecture, as it combines the useful arts with 
the fine arts, about which latter only I talk this evening. 
I shall confine myself to sculpture and painting. 

The only standard of beauty is truth, not distorted or 
modified, but as visible to the soul of the artist. It is 
nature freed from the trammels of time or circumstance. 

"Art must imitate nature," says Taine; "and when it 
ceases to do this it declines." But in imitating nature the 
artist's aim must be not to photograph, but to make mani- 
fest what is to him the predominating character, the essen- 
tial condition of being in the object. The faculty of per- 
ceiving and expressing this essential condition is artistic 
genius. 

In this endeavor to express this principal quality the 
artist arrives at the ideal — that is, he removes the obsta- 
cles that fate or fortune, environment or circumstance, has 
placed in nature's path, and gives it a chance to perfect 
itself on the lines of its first intention. This development 
is beautiful, because it is natural; and you know that it 
is natural because it is true. 

The ideal is the expression of what the artist feels he 
sees. The true artist feels that he sees the perfect form 
through the imperfections that clog nature, as Praxiteles 
saw the perfect figure of Venus sleeping within the rough- 
hewn block of marble. The aim of art is to cut away these 
imperfections, and to strive for the perfect, which must 
be the beautiful. A work of art must be, therefore, as 
Taine says, "a representation of an object more perfectly 
than it is found in nature." It is soulless nature plus 
soulful man evolved into the ideal. 

Ruskin says that the living power in all the real schools 
of art is the love of nature; that art followed as such, 



WHAT HAS ART DONE FOR CIVILIZATION? 121 

and for its own sake, irrespective of the interpretations of 
nature, is destructive of whatever is best and noblest in 
humanity; but that so far as it is devoted to the record 
or interpretation of nature, it is helpful and ennobling. 
Art culture, therefore, implies not only appreciation of the 
beautiful, but love of nature. It stimulates us to study 
God's handiwork, to distinguish the lines of beauty as 
God made them before man unmade them. It reveals to 
us the intelligence that guided creation, the skill that worked 
out creation, the beauty that thus found expression. It 
discovers to us that nature is perfect, because to have 
changed it would have made it imperfect. To idealize 
nature is not to change nature. The artist does not himself 
improve nature by idealizing it. He simply obeys the 
inspiration of nature and depicts her perfected in passing 
through the crucible of his soul. The artist in doing this 
works as nature wills. 

Love of beauty is therefore love of nature, and love of 
nature is love of God. By love of God I do not necessa- 
rily mean religion as commonly understood. I mean the wor- 
ship and adoration the soul offers up to the Supreme Artist 
who painted the skies and flecked them not with a cloud 
that marred their beauty, nor spangled them with stars 
but to add to the splendid effect of darkness light bepierced 
— who painted the valleys green, and cast a haze over 
rugged mountain sides — who varied the dullness of plains 
with the sheen of running waters, and painted o'er the 
green of spring with the gold of fall, that man might not 
tire of monotony, and then made man in His own image. 

The most beautiful form of nature is, therefore, the 
human form divine, and art was greatest when the 
human figure rather than human thought occupied most its 
attention. 

Ruskin says that "All progressive art hitherto has been 



122 WHAT HAS ART DONE FOR CIVILIZATION? 

religious art," and that "Art was never employed on a great 
scale except in the service of religion." 

I do not altogether agree with him. Religion may have 
furnished the occasion for the opportunity of art's greatest 
efforts, but it was not of itself the inspiration of the highest 
art known in history. 

In ancient Greece art climbed nearest heaven and brought 
the gods to earth. It was essentially human. Praxiteles 
in carving his Venus sought to deify humanity by produc- 
ing a perfect human form — to carve in marble his ideal 
of woman, if woman were divine — to give to man a type 
of beauty nature would have produced if, in creating woman, 
it had not been chained down by mortality. It was not 
divinity, but humanity, that his artistic soul worshiped. 

In those days man's best efforts were spent in cultivating 
health and strength, and grace and beauty of form, and 
athletic skill. Greatest in Greece was he who came off 
victor at the Olympian games and gave his name to the 
coming years. Whether Apelles painted beauty of face or 
depicted on canvas the mysteries of religious worship, we 
know not. Sculpture alone tells of Grecian art, and it 
found best expression in that which most interested the 
people of that time. The artists of that age did as artists 
of every age must do — they filled mind and heart with the 
ideas and sentiments of their age. Hence their master idea 
was "the living, healthy, energetic, active human body, 
endowed with every athletic and animal aptitude." It was 
their delight to carve from stone undraped humanity. All 
of this involved no immodesty, because there was no need 
for modesty. The human body was not from shame of 
exposure scrupulously concealed. On the contrary, it would 
have been almost sacrilege not to have exposed it to uni- 
versal admiration. It was held to be beautiful when healthy 
and strong and graceful. The nude did not exist. There 



WHAT HAS ART DONE FOR CIVILIZATION? 123 

was nakedness, not nudity. Excess of clothing, blushes 
consequent upon nudity, predominance of lust in the mind 
in lieu of appreciation of beauty in the eye — these all came 
when the people deteriorated and men could no longer 
stand the fatigues of athletic contests. Then Grecian art 
declined. 

The next great period of art was the Renaissance in 
Italy in the latter half of the fifteenth and the first half of 
the sixteenth centuries. Religion was then all-powerful, 
but it was much colored by human ambition. The Pope's 
earthly love of pomp and power gave Michael Angelo and 
Rafael the opportunities their genius craved; and Rafael's 
"Transfiguration," his Madonnas, his frescoes in the Vat- 
ican, and Michael Angelo's "Last Judgment," and his fres- 
coes in the Sistine Chapel, gave assurance to the world that 
art was not dead, but had risen from the grave to put on 
immortality. The aristocracy of church and state in Flor- 
ence, Rome, and Venice at this time was devoted mainly 
to the pleasures of this world. He ruled who had the 
strongest arm and keenest blade and bravest heart. Phys- 
ical health and strength and skill were every man's first care. 
The perfecting of the human body was one of man's chief 
aims. The most important acquirement in the art of draw- 
ing was to make a good drawing of a naked man or woman. 
Michael Angelo spent several years dissecting human bodies 
in order to know how to draw them. All the great artists 
of this period — Michael Angelo, Rafael, Leonardo da Vinci, 
Correggio, Titian, and after them the Flemish Rubens — 
strove hardest to paint a perfect human body, because 
nothing else in nature was so beautiful. They were alike 
in this common inspiration. They differed only in treat- 
ment of this common theme. 

In this difference lay their originality. Each depicted 
humanity as his soul conceived it, as his artistic eye saw it, 



124 WHAT HAS ART DONE FOR CIVILIZATION? 

as his genius told him that nature would have developed it, 
if man and circumstance had not marred it. No one of 
them agreed with another, and yet all were correct, each 
from his own point of view. Had any one of them not 
been correct, had he attempted to create instead of devoutly 
copying nature as he felt he saw it, had his ideal not been 
built upon the real, he would have failed and his name 
would have been lost in the lapse of centuries. Art was 
poor and hysterical before the Renaissance, it became poor 
and unnatural after these great artists had passed away, 
and for the same cause as in ancient Greece. 

The Venus of Milo and the School of Athens marked 
the two greatest periods in the history of art. These two 
masterpieces are beacon-lights of art, visible in the sur- 
rounding darkness of the centuries, like two distant light- 
houses in the multitudinous seas. Art in each of these 
works reached its zenith. 

What did art at its zenith accomplish for civilization? It 
should have done more then than at any other time. It 
did not save culture, progress, national health, strength, or 
glory from decay. On the contrary, it was followed closely 
in each case by moral, physical, and national decline. It 
gave to the world at these periods the sublimest expressions 
of man's idea of the beautiful; it found its inspiration in 
nature, and in nature its highest type was the human body. 
It led man to the study of nature in the search for the 
beautiful; it taught him that God's grandest creation was 
man, and that health and strength were necessary to his 
full development. Surely this w^as a good lesson. Civiliza- 
tion is impossible without it. 

But appreciation of the beautiful is one of the resultants 
of civilization, not one of its causes. It follows after the 
struggle for bread is successful, after the contest for wealth 
is won, after the conflicts of the battlefield are fought out to 



WHAT HAS ART DONE FOR CIVILIZATION? 125 

victory. It refines, elevates, ennobles man, develops his soul, 
raises his gaze from the sod to the star. But it can not 
sustain civilization. If history teaches anything, the glori- 
fication of art is rather an indication that civilization is 
reaching its zenith and that the down grade is approaching. 
It is the light that crowns the summit and illumines man's 
best condition. Prosperity is not, however, the best school 
for mankind. Character is built up by struggling to be 
prosperous. Its most dangerous foe is the attainment of 
the end desired. 

Are we not more civilized at the end of the nineteenth 
century than in the fifth century before Christ, or at the 
end of the fifteenth century after Christ? We are; but 
we are again fighting for bread, and the hosts of wealth 
and poverty are watching each other across the battlefield. 
The craving for the useful almost drives out the love of 
the beautiful. The eyes of the people are not trained to 
appreciation of painting or sculpture. Art is not in their 
souls. There is no public opinion on which art can feed. 
Uncultured wealth in seeking for culture is trying to build 
up, to encourage art, and bribe it to decorate its marble 
halls. But art that can be bribed, that goes for inspira- 
tion only to the money-bags of Croesus, has no soul. Such 
is not great art. Nature reveals to it naught of her beauty. 
Art is, however, imperishable. Nature during certain periods 
simply withholds but does not throw away the key to her 
treasures. 

At its own proper hour the love of the beautiful will 
again fill our lives as of old in Greece and Italy, and will 
find expression in the genius of some modern Praxiteles, 
Michael Angelo, or Rafael. 

In the meantime, I would not turn away from the works 
of the artists of this nineteenth century. They, to some 



126 WHAT HAS ART DONE FOR CIVILIZATION? 

extent, draw inspiration from inanimate nature, and so in 
landscapes give us the highest art of the day. 

But, though this modern art is not as great as that of 
which I have spoken, it is teaching us what is ugliness; 
that the frescoes on the walls of our public libraries 
are as much educators as the books on the shelves; tliat 
education consists not only in filling the mind with the 
lore of books, but also in training the eye to a quick per- 
ception of the beautiful in nature; and that while the 
intellect may be satisfied to acquire data from photographs 
of nature, the soul is not content therewith, but must have 
the impressions that data make on artistic genius. This 
education in art, this development of love of the beautiful, 
this cultivation in us of a true appreciation of nature may 
be the precursor of that artistic condition of civilization 
when art will rediscover the human form, regardless of 
sex, when health, strength, athletic grace will be higher 
marks of beauty than dress or mere facial expression ; when 
the female figure will be painted because it is beautiful of 
itself, and not for the passion it inspires; when art will 
find its highest inspiration where Phidias and Michael 
Angelo found it. This will be when our civilization is on 
a different plane, and truth is attractive because it is truth. 

Art is, therefore, an expression of civilization, and 
expresses only that which for the time is in or of civiliza- 
tion. The highest art is, therefore, civilization in its most 
attractive phase, and has as such done much for man. 



'THE PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES" 



(Delivered at the Banquet of the California Society of the Sons 
of the American Revolution, February 22, 1902, 
San Francisco, California.) 



MR. PRESIDENT, and Brothers of This Distin- 
guished Order: I am very glad the President began 
this banquet with reading messages from the Daughters, 
because, though a bachelor, I am willing to allege upon 
information and belief that therein lies our sole hope of 
perpetuation. 

I like these words on the opening page of your pro- 
gramme : 

"One flag, one land, one heart, one hand, 
One nation, evermore." 

Those are glorious words. I am a Southerner, and we 
Southerners henceforth follow the flag, whether the Con- 
stitution does so or not. 

Carlisle says that great men are profitable company. But 
there are different kinds of great men. The literature of 
the past twenty years has been luminous with the history 
of Napoleon, a man so wonderfully great that we must all 
believe the truth of his own statement, that centuries must 
pass before circumstances can combine to produce another 
such as he. But his greatness is like that of the meteor, 
that consumes while it illumines; its brilliancy the mani- 
festation of its own destruction; its course preceded by 
darkness and followed by death. Such a great man is 
profitable only as a warning. The men whom this occasion 



128 "PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES" 

suggests are profitable as exemplars. By the lives they 
led, by the things they did, the world has been the gainer, 
mankind has been uplifted, and this country guided to its 
present grandeur and glory. I refer to the Presidents of 
the United States. Their records are writ in letters of 
light upon the parchment of the skies, where all may read 
and admire. 

I have not time to recount them all, to read through this 
roll of honor. Their names, like household words, even 
children lisp in schoolroom declamations. Some of them 
are more familiar to us than others. Jefferson, whose admin- 
istration began with the century just ended, earned his 
meed of glory when he penned the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. But fate destined him for more renown, and 
made him her instrument to disseminate throughout this 
continent the spirit of independence by extending our 
domain from Plymouth Rock to where rolls the Oregon, 
from the lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. 

John Adams earned the undying gratitude of his coun- 
trymen by appointing John Marshall as Chief Justice of 
the United States Supreme Court. Andrew Jackson is 
known familiarly as the hero of New Orleans, but his fame 
is more solidly based upon the fact that he set his iron heel 
upon nullification, and thereby postponed secession for thirty 
years. General Grant — what of him? 

"On Fame's eternal camping ground 
His silent tent is spread, 
And glory guards with solemn round 
That bivouac of the dead." 

Of all the Presidents of the past, but one survives. All 
but one have gone to render an account of their stewardship 
to Him in whose hands are the destinies of all the nations. 
But that one need not apprehend his final account. When 
anarchy stalked abroad along its pathway of ruin and riot. 



"PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES" 129 

and the mob threatened to overthrow law and substitute 
the reign of the commune, Grover Cleveland suppressed the 
mob and made them bow to government under the law. 
When the railroad strikes were suppressed the country knew 
that there was a great man in the White House. 

But, illustrious as were all these, there were three others, 
a great presidential trinity, whose names were not born to 
die, whom the country will ever recognize as three great 
Presidents. In the providence of God they were given us 
to lead this country through its three greatest crises. 

It has been said of Washington that there were generals 
more brilliant and statesmen more profound. Yet it was 
he who, with soldiers whom the country neither fed nor 
clothed, vanquished the well-equipped armies of Europe. 
It was he who achieved our independence, and, in the lan- 
guage of Marshall, "more than any other agency contrib- 
uted to founding this wide-spreading empire." Well has 
it been said of him that though with him the colonies 
nearly failed, without him they would have had to wait 
for a more favorable opportunity. These people, then num- 
bering only three millions, organized into thirteen States, 
harmonized by his wisdom and controlled by the inspira- 
tion of his unique personality, founded that more perfect 
Union that, seventy-one years later, when organized into 
thirty-three States, with thirty-one millions of people, Abra- 
ham Lincoln gave his life to save. Washington created 
this Union; Lincoln preserved it. Washington brought 
forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty ; 
Lincoln gave to this nation a new birth of freedom. Because 
of his wisdom and humanity, his malice toward none and 
charity toward all, his firmness to do the right as God gave 
it to him to see it, his fortitude and endurance, his guiding 
hand in time of trouble, we are able to say today, on this 



130 "PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES" 

one hundred and seventieth anniversary of Washington's 
birthday, as he said on the field of Gettysburg, "government 
of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not 
perish from the earth." 

But what of the third of this trinity? It were eulogy 
enough to say of him that his election rekindled the fire 
in a thousand furnaces, started again the wheels to turn- 
ing, refilled our factories with busy artisans, and made 
again the hum of industry our national melody. But more 
than that is William McKinley's due. During his presi- 
dency he could have said: "This is our day of greatest 
peril, because it is our day of greatest prosperity." 

Yet, in the midst of this great prosperity, this land 
stands confronted with the greatest problems. Solve them 
it must. It can not go backward. Forward it must go, 
for progress is the rule of national as well as individual life. 
The trust that withered in Spain's palsied hand is now in our 
vigorous keeping. The dusky people of the Caribbean isles 
and the Filipino millions look to us for light and guidance. 
Shall they look in vain? Shall God's untutored millions 
share not in our golden largess? Shall we bury this treas- 
ure, or with this treasure shall we gather increase? We have 
arrived at man's estate. Shall we live out our manhood 
within the narrow bounds our boyhood knew? Shall the 
sun-rimmed horizon of living unto self blind our aspira- 
tions and limt our endeavors? Shall we take part in the 
world's affairs, or become a hermit nation, or shall we 
do our duty in that state of international life unto which 
it has pleased God to call us? Neither nations nor indi- 
viduals can live to themselves alone. We are our brothers' 
keepers. In the great plans of the Almighty we have 
our part to perform in the working out of civilization. 
For our part of this great task we have been all our lives 



"PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES" 131 

preparing. With prophetic ink in the sibylline book of 
fate it has long been written what we have to do. As the 
drop of rain does not create but only starts the life lying 
dormant in the grain of wheat, and as the flash of light- 
ning reveals but does not produce the visions of the night, 
so the flash of our victorious guns in the war with Spain 
simply revealed the new responsibilities and duties that had 
long been in preparation for our young shoulders. I 
believe that we will be equal to these new responsibilities 
and successfully bear these new duties to the end. I believe 
that the path of duty leads to national greatness. I believe 
that this country will keep pace with the quick step of 
events; that there will be no turning backward; that we 
will ever be a leader and exemplar among the nations, and 
will ever sacredly tend the lamp that liberty holds to light 
the world. 

Thus could William McKinley have spoken, and truly 
would he have spoken. Therefore I speak truly when I 
say that, with unbending shoulders, he so bore these our 
new burdens, and with patriotism and wisdom he so dis- 
charged these our new responsibilities, that our day of 
greatest peril became our day of greatest glory, only sad- 
dened by his untimely taking off. 

"A man of kindly heart, to kindly deeds disposed, 
His soul by kindly light was led above the stars." 

When a great man dies, men are apt to despair, and to 
say, in the words of Homer, "Ulysses has gone upon his 
travels, and there is no one left in Ithaca to bend his 
bow." The sentiment is a false one. There is always an 
arm to bend the bow when there is an arrow to be shot. 
In the evolution of fate the occasion always produces the 
man; the work always brings its own doer. And hence 
came Roosevelt. Young, strenuous, with faith in his 



132 "PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES" 

country's great destiny, opportunity-grasping, with courage 
for any difficulty her leadership may impose, too young in 
office for eulogy, yet giving promise of greatness, he takes 
his place in the line of Presidents, supported by the best 
wishes of every American who doubts not of his country. 



AMERICAN IMPERIALISM 



(Delivered at the Banquet of the California Society of the Sons 
of the American Revolution, San Fran- 
cisco, October 29, 1898.) 



MR. PRESIDENT and Gentlemen: Hundreds of 
years ago there journeyed from palace to court, from 
court to church, from the throne to the altar, and from 
priest to king, a navigator who believed that the world 
was much larger than Roman Emperor or Vandal Chief 
or Spanish Monarch had ever dreamed, and that there were 
undiscovered lands rich in silver and gold that had never 
paid tribute to Rome, Constantinople, or Madrid. This 
man was Columbus, and in Spanish ships he crossed the 
trackless seas, and revealed this continent to an astonished 
world. Such veneration have we always shown for the 
name of this navigator, that, in 1893, we gave his name 
to that white city by the lake where all the children of 
the sons of men, from Greenland's icy mountains to Afric's 
burning sands, and from the wave-washed islands of many 
seas, gathered in friendly competition much that was best 
and most beautiful and useful in art and science and skill 
and trade and agriculture and manufacture, and we entitled 
it the Columbian Exposition, and to it not only were there 
sent from Spain truthful reproductions of those famous 
ships that brought Columbus to these shores, but also there 
came as the honored guests of this government royal rep- 
resentatives of that government that started Columbus on 
his inspired voyage. And yet, in 1898, after a lapse of 
only five years, these two nations have been at war, and 



134 AMERICAN IMPERIALISM 

the big guns that in 1893 were but instruments of cour- 
tesy, and thundered only in friendly salutations, became 
engines of death, and belched forth missiles carrying 
destruction to Spanish ships. 

For years the nations of Europe have been making the 
seas populous with their floating leviathans of war, while 
they have made the land resonant with the roll of drum, 
blast of trumpet, and tread of marching armies. Their 
ever watchful sentinels have been for years standing guard 
with bayonets crossed o'er national boundaries, while their 
mobilized fleets have given constant warning to neighboring 
thrones. 

"At every bastioned frontier, every State, 
Suspicion, sworded, standing by the gate." 

During these years all our ways were ways of pleasant- 
ness, and all our paths were paths of peace, and this republic 
gazed with wonder, unmixed with alarm, at these mighty 
armaments, while its people's shoulders, unbent by military 
burdens, stooped only in thriftful toil, and wealth filled 
their coffers that needed no soldier guard. 

During this time the United States maintained an army 
and built a navy in no way commensurate with its resources, 
and, as we now discover, insufficient for its needs, appar- 
ently oblivious of the need of either. 

Therefore today in this land, to which war seemed most 
remote, the call to arms rang out with all the suddenness 
of an alarm of fire at midnight, and we can hardly yet 
realize that from counting-room and college hall and schol- 
ar's desk and workman's bench our citizens by the hundred 
thousand rushed to enlist beneath the stars and stripes to 
fight a foreign foe upon foreign soil, that war has come 
and gone, and a new day of peace has dawned, disclosing 
the stars and stripes floating over the islands of the Eastern 
and Western seas where but lately the red and yellow 



AMERICAN IMPERIALISM 135 

flag of Spain marked the death-bed of Spain's colonial 
power. 

Why did we go into a war that we knew would, and that 
has, cost us millions in money and the lives of many of 
our brave soldiers and seamen? For territorial conquest? 
For this nearly all the other nations are now battling, or 
on the eve thereof. England is fighting a pathway for 
civilization up the Nile, leaving opportunities for English 
colonization in the wake of her victorious armies. France 
and England are almost locking horns in their scramble 
for territory in Western and Central Africa. Germany and 
England are both ambitious for aggrandizement in Southern 
Africa. Russia, Germany, England, and France are jeal- 
ously watching one another in their preliminary steps for 
parceling out China. 

We took upon our shoulders the burden of battle, we 
assumed the cost of carnage, we were prepared to wear 
crepe for our kindred killed, because we had determined 
to wage war for humanity's sake alone, because in the name 
of humanity, in the name of civilization, we had ordered 
Spain to leave Cuba. 

We entered into a war out of which we expected that 
there should come to us only the sufferings of those who 
fall in battle, and the grief of loved ones at home, only 
sacrifices and burdens, and the satisfaction of having ended 
misery and misrule in a neighboring land, and of duty 
done and protection to the weak maintained. We fought 
to carry out the principle upon which this government was 
founded, namely, the uplifting of the weak and the resist- 
ing of the strong. Never before, since the crusades, has 
a nation embarked in such an unselfish adventure. 

We went to war with Spain, and we taught her by the 
lesson of shot and shell that American gunners, backed 
by the impulse of freedom to enslaved and suffering human- 



136 AMERICAN IMPERIALISM 

ity, are invincible; that a new day has dawned for the 
Antilles and the Philippines, and its sun is the torch that 
liberty holds to light the world. 

Over the victims of Spanish misrule floated the buzzard, 
and the eagle winged its flight and drove this vulture from 
the islands of the seas. 

After war developed, however humanitarian its inception, 
destiny, that shapes our ends, opened her Pandora's box, 
and out rushed a score of causative events that have driven 
us into the international world, into the company of the 
nations, where that nation will win that has the power 
and that one will hold that can. From a potential we must 
now become an actual great power, and upon the camera 
of the future we must cast one of the largest shadows or 
none at all. 

Destiny works in a mysterious way its wonders to per- 
form, and rarely reveals in advance what is forging in the 
workshop of fate. Behind the curtain of the future tomor- 
row waits, holding in its hands the unexpected and the 
inevitable, towards which the unerring and irresistible mag- 
net of fate hurries the nations. 

Yesterday we were hedged in by a Chinese wall of Amer- 
ican isolation, and deaf, blind, and heedless of the world 
without, we neither accepted the responsibilities of our true 
place among the nations nor secured its advantages. Yes- 
terday's tomorrow finds that wall razed by the magic bat- 
tering ram of destiny, and o'er its ruins marched the Cuban 
and Philippine expeditions. No longer can our Ship of 
State keep within sight of the shores of an inland lake, 
but henceforth it must navigate the open sea. Upon this 
sea there are other ships, some large and powerful, others 
weak and small. With some of them we must in time 
come in conflict, with others we must sail in friendly com- 
panionship. If coming events have cast their shadows 



AMERICAN IMPERIALISM 137 

before, and the friendly and unfriendly utterances concern- 
ing us that were heard but yesterday in Europe are prophetic 
of future international relations, there is a certain mighty 
Ship of State with which ours may eventually combine into 
an armada that shall rule the seas. 

The time has come when we have colonial possessions 
beyond the seas, when our position is such that we are forced 
to be on the commission in whose keeping is the peace of 
the world. 

This policy is called "Imperialism," and we are told that 
it means an abandonment of the Monroe Doctrine and of 
the policy of the Father of his Country. Washington's 
farewell address and Monroe's message are held up to us 
as the sheet anchors of our Ship of State, the infallible 
guides fate has given us to follow for all time, the breaking 
away from which will certainly bring national destruction. 

Washington and Monroe were wise in their day and 
generation, but their day is not forever. 

At the beginning of our history our national existence 
depended upon our isolation. It was then the custom of 
the great powers to trade small possessions as if they were 
jack-knives. In this way the Dutch colony of New York 
was acquired by England, and in this way the latter country 
traded Havana for the Floridas. The Europe that Richelieu 
had distributed so as to balance the nations Napoleon redis- 
tributed, drawing national boundaries along the compass 
lines of his ambition. After Napoleon the Holy Alliance 
grasped the dice-box of the kingdoms, and began to throw 
new combinations upon the green table of the nations. Its 
openly avowed aim was to suppress freedom, rivet anew 
the people's chains, and reburnish crowns whose luster had 
grown dim, and this policy was about to be applied to 
the restoration of Spain's dominion over her revolted colo- 
nies on this continent. Then it was that Monroe supple- 



138 AMERICAN IMPERIALISM 

merited Washington's farewell address with his celebrated 
message. 

Washington feared that the powers of Europe would be 
continually, as John Adams said, maneuvering to work us 
into their real or imaginary balances of power, to make us 
a makeweight candle in weighing out their pounds. Monroe 
feared that our national independence would be endangered 
by allowing the Holy Alliance to bring any part of this con- 
tinent under its baneful influence, and make liberty here 
subservient to the greed and ambition of kings. Therefore 
the farewell address and the message crystallized as the 
foreign policy of this country the determination not to 
entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe, not to allow 
the European powers to meddle in American affairs, not to 
permit these powers to transfer their American possessions 
from one to the other, and to withdraw this continent 
from European colonization. "The address," said Jefferson, 
"made us a nation; the message set the compass and pointed 
the course which we were to steer through the ocean of 
time opening to us." But Jefferson was also pre-eminently 
convinced that the constitution pointed the course which 
we were to steer through the ocean of time opening to 
us, and yet he did not hesitate to deviate, as he believed, 
from this course in purchasing Louisana, justifying himself 
by the necessities of the situation, and by the conviction 
that constitutions and policies were made for countries and 
not countries for constitutions and policies. 

Nothing in this so-called imperialism, however, is in 
conflict with either the address or the message. We do 
not propose to take a hand in the political game in Europe. 
The dual alliance of Muscovite and Gaul, the triple alliance 
of Austrian, German, and Italian, and England in her 
all-sufficient individuality, may do with their own affairs 
as they please, and look on unblushingly while Mussulmen 



AMERICAN IMPERIALISM 139 

murder Christians, and Turkey dismembers Greece, and the 
United States will only point to the grave of its sons who 
died for humanity in Cuba, and to freedom's banner crown- 
ing Morro Castle, and will say to mankind: "Look on 
this picture and then on that." 

We still adhere to the Monroe doctrine, and still assert 
that "the American continents, by the free and independent 
condition which they have assumed and maintain, are hence- 
forth not to be considered as subjects for future coloniza- 
tion by any European powers," and that "we should consider 
any attempt on their part to extend their system to any 
portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and 
safety." We still stand ready to prevent any European 
power from doing what France attempted in Mexico, or 
England in Venezuela. 

If, however, it still be maintained that the present policy 
is a departure from the policy of Washington and Monroe, 
then so let it be. Our hand is to the plow; we must fol- 
low the furrow to the end. The wind is off shore, and 
we must take advantage of the breeze, steering our course 
by the star of our destiny. No longer shall dead hands 
extend their fleshless fingers from century-old graves like 
skeleton guides to point the living present to any inexorable 
course. 

If it be imperialism to favor territorial expansion, then 
imperialism began with Jefferson, who purchased Louisiana 
and favored the annexation of Cuba. It continued with 
Munroe, who partly purchased and partly seized Florida. 
It was characteristic of all who, by conquest and treaty, 
extended our domain from Salt Lake to the Golden Gate, 
and from the Rio Grande to Mt. Shasta. It includes among 
its votaries Andrew Johnson, who brought beneath our flag 
the land that is lit by the Aurora Borealis, and makes 
an imperialist of Ulysses S. Grant, who would have illu- 



140 AMERICAN IMPERIALISM 

mined our galaxy of stars with the Southern Cross that 
brightens the skies o'er San Domingo. 

We are told again that the new imperialism leads to 
the acquisition of territory away from this continent, to 
the annexation of islands that we can not govern as colo- 
nies, nor admit into the Union as States, nor endow with' 
universal suffrage, nor populate with our people, but which 
we must nevertheless defend with our army and navy, and 
that this will demoralize our government, compel a large 
standing army and navy, increase our taxes, and bring us 
into conflict with other nations; that it sounds the knell 
of the republic and inaugurates the reign of the plutocrat 
and military autocrat. 

If all this be true, it is unfortunate, as the Antilles, the 
Hawaiian Islands, and part, if not all, of the Philippines 
are already practically annexed. We can not give them 
back, and it would seem to be wisdom to seek how best 
to bear these new responsibilities that we can not avoid, 
rather than to waste our time in endeavoring to escape 
the inevitable. 

But all this gloomy foreboding is not true prophecy. 
We can govern these possessions as colonies; we are not 
compelled ever to admit them as States; and it is not 
necessary that we populate them with our own people. For 
ages their population will not be fitted for statehood, if 
they can ever so become. We can carry to them law, order, 
and education; we can free them from the tyranny of 
church and caste ; we can make freedom attractive to them 
by exemplifying its bcHiefits, and we can thereby further 
and promote the cause of civilization. But we need not 
repeat the mistakes of our own history, and with Utopian 
blindness extend to them the right of suffrage, and we will 
not demoralize our government by refusing so to do. 



AMERICAN IMPERIALISM 141 

That we must increase our army and navy is true, and 
also is it true that thereby our taxes will be increased. 

Our standing army should be increased. For years we 
must in our island possessions sustain the law with visible 
force until confidence is bred of justice, and the husband- 
man learns that he will reap what he sows, unmolested 
by native brigand or governmental bandit. Furthermore, 
our own land is full today of physical wrecks, and every 
encampment recently occupied by our army is fringed with 
the graves of our soldiers, all the victims of a policy that 
dwarfed our army at the bidding of the millionaire who 
feared the tax-gatherer, and of the Socialist who feared 
the preserver of law and order. Pay more for a living 
army, and you will pay less in pensions for dead or invalided 
soldiers. Imperialism will be a benefactor if it thus enables 
us, by increasing our military system both in numbers and 
efficiency, better to take care of those who offer their lives 
for their country. 

Our navy also should be increased. The great contest 
of the future is to be for commercial existence, commercial 
extension, commercial supremacy. The battleship must keep 
open the course of the merchantman. Trade must live by 
the aggressiveness that is behind it, or it must perish. 

Germany, with practically no colonies and no coast line, 
and with already a powerful navy afloat, has appropriated 
$118,000,000 for new ships to be finished in 1904; France, 
with few colonies, has appropriated $160,000,000 for new 
ships to increase her present large armament ; Russia has 
appropriated $46,000,000 for the same purpose. Every one 
of these men-of-war will be launched with its prow pointed 
to the Orient and the Tropics, where these nations hope to 
gain and build up trade by the acquisition of territory, and 
to keep this trade to themselves by closing to others the 
doors through which it comes and goes. 



142 AMERICAN IMPERIALISM 

By treaty we have the right of admission to the Chinese 
market upon the terms of entire equality with every other 
nation. And yet we have allowed Talien-Wan to be ceded 
to Russia, and Kiao-Chou to Germany, without safeguard- 
ing this right. A sufficient safeguard will be the immediate 
ability to enforce it. We must not allow it to be impaired. 
Already the products of our fields and mines and factories 
have grown beyond our own consumption. Last year our 
domestic exports exceeded those of 1894 by $100,000,000, 
or 77 per cent. Much of this goes to China. Our loco- 
motives are whistling at the gates of Peking. Mongolian 
bloomers bestride American bicycles, and American type- 
writers print Chinese characters in the counting-rooms of 
Canton. Shall this trade continue and grow? Are we to 
hold our own in the Orient? Are all Oriental doors to 
be kept open to our ships and merchants? 

In the keen competition of the immediate future for the 
vast trade of the Orient, where the flower of civilization is 
just budding, we must be in a position to demand and 
exact our share, or we will lose it. We must match Port 
Arthur and Kiao-Chou with Manila. 

Behind courage there must be strength. Behind great 
national interests there must be immediate and sufficient 
protection known of all men. We have courage, but behind 
it little strength immediately available. We have great 
national interests, but it is now known of all men that the 
protection behind them, though possible, is remote. Neither 
in the Atlantic nor in the Pacific had we six months ago 
a spot where an American ship could coal as of right. 
Within six months the God of Battles has planted our flag 
upon islands in the Atlantic and unfurled it upon islands 
in the distant Pacific, and a friendly people have unfolded 
it where the waters break on Honolulu's coral reef. There 



AMERICAN IMPERIALISM 143 

it will remain as long as American courage backs up Amer- 
ican genius upon the decks of an American man-of-war. 

With the Antilles protecting the eastern end of the Nica- 
ragua Canal, and the Hawaiian Islands and the Philippines 
as strategic and distributing points in the Pacific, we will 
be prepared to keep all trade courses and doors open to 
ourselves, and, if necessary, to cooperate with Great Britain, 
who at present is fighting single-handed for the "open door" 
in the Orient. 

In this policy England's course runs with ours. May 
they always run together. In the eloquent words of our 
recent Embassador to the Court of St. James: "These two 
peoples are bound by ties they did not forge and that they 
can not break; they are joint ministers in the same sacred 
mission of freedom and progress, charged by the imposition 
of irresistible hands with duties they can not evade." 

Thirty years ago Secretary Seward said: "The Pacific 
Ocean, its shores, its islands, and the vast regions beyond 
will become the chief theater of events in the world's great 
hereafter." This prophecy is in its fulfillment. This here- 
after is dawning, its morning is at hand. Before its sun 
nears the meridian this ocean will have become the inter- 
national arena in which the empires will struggle for the 
trade of the world. The two great combatants will be the 
Slav and the Anglo-Saxon. The Slav is young in accom- 
plishments, but mighty in possibilities and limitless in 
resources. The Anglo-Saxon is today in the prime of a 
healthy, vigorous manhood. He has behind him the glo- 
rious record of centuries of noble achievements. He has 
been the King Arthur at the round table of civilization. 

It was the Anglo-Saxon race that shattered Spain's world- 
spreading empire, curbed the ambition of Philip the Second, 
crushed his armada, and checked the growth of absolutism 
and ecclesiasticism. It was the Anglo-Saxon race, more 



144 AMERICAN IMPERIALISM 

than the snows of Russia, that vanquished Napoleon, pre- 
vented the triumph of personal Imperialism, and stood 
guard at St. Helena over the military genius of all the 
ages. It is the Anglo-Saxon race that is **the pioneer of 
progress and the stubborn defender of liberty," and that 
gave mankind civil liberty, whereby authority and law are 
harnessed together to the chariot of modern civilization; 
and it is this Anglo-Saxon race from which we are sprung. 
"We, too, are heirs of Runnymede, and Shakespeare's fame 
and Cromwell's deeds are not alone our mother's." If we 
are to help this race continue on in its apparently divinely 
appointed path, and do our duty in this new sphere of 
national and international life in which it has pleased God 
to put us, we must start out upon our new career with no 
uncertain tread, meeting our new obligations as fearlessly, 
resolutely, and successfully as our revolutionary fathers met 
theirs when they founded this Republic. 

I believe that we will be equal to our opportunities and 
faithful to our stewardship, and that, though "the Republic 
has on her shoulders the mantle of empire, and has taken 
the sceptre of empire in her hands, and has set upon her 
own head the crown of empire," she will ever remain a 
government of the people, by the people, and for the peo- 
ple, ever heedful of the cause of humanity, ever watchful 
of the liberties of her people, better equipped to attend to 
her people's needs, and her imperialism will be only a 
broader democracy. 



LAW AND COMMERCE 



(Delivered} at a Dinner given by the Merchants and Manufac- 
turers of San Francisco to Charles M. Hays, the new Pres- 
ident of the Southern Pacific Company, January i8, 1901.) 



MR. CHAIRMAN and Gentlemen : I am terrified at 
being called upon to talk about commerce, as I know 
nothing about the subject. I am heartbroken in being 
asked to talk law to so many possible clients with no fee 
in sight. My only consolation is that a layman generally 
pays very dearly for law that he gets for nothing, and this 
is not so much of an Irish bull as it sounds. I hope, how- 
ever, that the two, law and commerce, will always be linked 
together ; that is, I hope that commerce will never get 
out of law, for lawyers must live. A poet (probably Gold- 
smith) well and truthfully said: 

"Merchants and railroad men may flourish or may fade, 
A breath can make them as a breath has made, 
But a bold lawyer, the country's pride, 
When once destroyed can never be supplied." 

This poet, as you see, anticipated our hosts of this even- 
ing in bringing merchants and railroad men together. They 
should be together. Like the lion and the lamb, they should 
lie down together. As to which one will get up outside of 
the other I can only say that I would suggest David 
Harum's advice, "Do unto the other man as he would do 
unto you, but do it first." 

You men of commerce have as your guest this evening 
a new railroad man, who has been for several years absent 



146 LAW AND COMMERCE 

from his native land doing missionary work among the 
heathen, and I am reliably informed that he is one of the 
few missionaries in foreign lands that recently did not have 
to get out in a hurry. He tells me that he left no broken 
china behind him. 

Mr. Hays has returned to this country for his country's 
good, and I am informed by him that this country never 
ceased to be his country, and that he came back every 
year to vote for McKinley. I think that a good patriot 
and a good railroad man is a very good combination, the 
equal of a good man of commerce, and almost as good as 
a lawyer. Speaking, therefore, about law and commerce, 
I congratulate this city upon the acquisition of such a 
citizen. He has a great opportunity. May he be equal to 
it ! While he is becoming acquainted with us, with our 
ways, with our coast, and with the great properites com- 
mitted to his care, give him encouragement rather than 
criticism, bearing in mind the inscription that not many 
years ago was usually suspended over the band at a miners' 
ball: "Do not shoot the musicians, they are doing the best 
they know how." 

I know of no position upon this Coast, either in law or 
commerce, that carries with it as onerous duties, as great 
responsibilities both to the public and to the individual, as 
the presidency of the Southern Pacific. Through his com- 
pany he must come in many shapes and knock at many doors 
and pay tribute to and take tribute from all our industries. 
He is the great evangel of transportation on this Coast, 
and as nothing has contributed more than improvement in 
transportation to make the nineteenth century the greatest 
of all centuries, bringing nations and states nearer together, 
making possible a more general enjoyment of the necessi- 
ties, comforts, and luxuries of life, and giving to want 
more of the largess of wealth, so as a manager of trans- 



LAW AND COMMERCE ' 147 

portation he has a great work to do hi keeping up this 
improvement and in helping to make the twentieth century 
an equal contributor to the world's advancement. 

In this connection I desire to say that nothing more 
distinctly characterizes the wonderful creative, executive, 
and financial ability, the tremendous grasp of innumerable 
details, the persistence, energy, and courage of the late 
C. P. Huntington than the fact that the great duties that 
Mr. Hays is about to undertake as president of the South- 
ern Pacific are but a part of those that Mr. Huntington 
bore with unstooping shoulders to a ripe old age. Many 
hands are required to bear the burden his two hands bore 
alone. Sucn men are the builders of nations. 

Now, my friends, speaking of law and commerce, may 
you have much of both ! May your lawyers flourish and 
your merchants thrive! The opening century comes full of 
promise to this country and this Coast. Your city fronts 
the Orient. The star of empire, the morning star of the 
twentieth century, now domes the Pacific and lights with its 
earliest rays the Golden Gate that opens up to this metrop- 
olis its queenship of the future. May naught dim its luster 
but the smoke of myriad locomotives and myriad steam- 
ships and myriad factories, rising o'er your bay and city 
like clouds of incense to your commercial greatness ! May 
all the prosperity that can be produced by a fertile soil, 
mines rich in silver and gold, a mild climate, an industrious 
people, grand harbors, great opportunities, and a flag that 
honors and protects, be yours ! May the new century keep 
its promise to the ear and break it not to hope, and may 
you ever congratulate yourselves both on your law and 
your commerce, for ill fares the land, to hastening ills a 
prey, where commerce accumulates and lawyers decay. 



FROM PLYMOUTH ROCK TO THE GOLDEN GATE 



(Delivered at the Annual Dinner of the New England Society 

of New York, at the Waldorf-Astoria, New York, 

December 22, 1903.) 



MR. PRESIDENT and Gentlemen: When Patrick 
Henry heard of Bunker Hill, he sent word to Mas- 
sachusetts : *T am not a Virginian; I am an American." 
When I received the kind invitation of your Vice-President 
to attend this annual gathering of the New England 
Society of New York, I said: "I am not a Californian; 
I am an American." Therefore, like Patrick Henry, I 
accepted the New England invitation. 

Steam and electricity have so annihilated space and time, 
and brought so close together the Atlantic and Pacific, that 
their roarings almost commingle in one diapason* of the 
waves; while commerce and a new spirit of nationality 
have so nearly obliterated State and sectional lines, and 
we are all so tied and bound together, so near to one 
another — neighbors, though whole wide leagues apart — that 
we realize as never before that statehood pales before 
Americanhood ; that the greatest birthright of every one 
of us, whether he hails from New England's rocky coast, 
the everglades of Florida, or the orange groves of Cali- 
fornia, is that he is an American, and that Americans are 
one people, with one tongue, one flag, one country indi- 
visible forever. 

It is this spirit that makes every one of us of all the 
forty-five States feel that he is no longer a stranger in 



FROM PLYMOUTH ROCK TO GOLDEN GATE 149 

any part of this American continent over which float the 
Stars and Stripes, however distant he may be from the place 
of his nativity. 

Therefore, though I have journeyed over mountains high 
and rivers broad and plains of almost boundless reach to 
attend this feast, and though my home lies beyond the 
horizon's dip, I am no stranger among you, but one of 
you, glad and proud to assist in honoring the memory of 
the Pilgrim Fathers. As we Americans say, "We, too, are 
heirs of Runnymede, and Shakespeare's fame and Crom- 
well's deeds are not alone old England's," so we Califor- 
nians say, "We, too, are heirs of Plymouth Rock, and the 
Mayflower's fame and the Pilgrims' deeds are not alone 
New England's." 

The sentiment to which you have asked me to respond, 
"From Plymouth Rock to the Golden Gate," is a grand 
one, more suited for an epic poem of Homeric propor- 
tions than for an after-dinner brief oration. Ulysses com- 
passed not so much in all his fabled wanderings. 

The sentiment begins with the sowing of the seed, it 
ends with the reaping of the harvest. It begins with hope 
born of faith, it ends with fulfillment produced by destiny. 
The poet would make it read, 

"From the New England manse, with its mosses, 
To the CaHfornia mission, with its crosses." 

My surroundings this evening suggest that it might be 
paraphrased, "From the cabin of the Mayflower to the 
banquet hall of the Waldorf-Astoria," or "From pinching 
poverty to wondrous wealth as great as that of Ormus or 
of Ind." 

If, when John Carver landed from the Mayflower with 
his little band of poorly fed and poorly clad Puritans, he 
could have foreseen this room of splendor, this luxurious 



150 FROM PLYMOUTH ROCK TO GOLDEN GATE 

table, these wines, the silks and satins and precious stones our 
fair guests adorn, he would have immediately re-embarked 
and sailed back to Leyden, for to him there was no doubt- 
ing that 

'Til fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay," 

We are glad he had no such revelation, for we know that 
wealth may accumulate, and yet men not decay. 

Every generation is apt to think those burdens the 
heaviest its shoulders have to bear, those dangers the most 
perilous its courage has to brave, those responsibilities the 
greatest it has to face. 

When Abraham Lincoln was invited by this honorable 
society to attend its annual reunion in 1864, he replied: 
"The work of the Plymouth emigrants was the glory of 
their age. While we reverence their memory, let us not 
forget how vastly greater is our opportunity." 

The Puritans bore burdens and dared dangers that would 
have crushed most people, but they had very little oppor- 
tunity save the opportunity of failing. With no warmth 
against the cold save the fire of faith that burned upon 
the hearthstones of their hearts; with famine imminent 
and death their daily visitant ; with no resources save 
strong arms, courage, and high resolve; few in number 
and poor in purse, they began the building of an empire 
whose foundations were the rights of man, and they built 
upon the Rock of Ages. "They were men (coequal with 
their fate) who did great things, unconscious they were 
great." Little did they dream what the morrow would 
bring forth. Surely Destiny works in a mysterious way 
its wonders to perform, and rarely reveals in advance what 
is forging in the workshop of fate. 



FROM PLYMOUTH ROCK TO GOLDEN GATE 151 

When Lincoln came the corner-stone had been laid, the 
building had progressed far in its construction. The expe- 
rience of its founders was a guide for its completion. 

Let us not forget how vastly greater was our strength 
in 1864 than theirs in 1620. We had the opportunity and 
the power of forever silencing in our republic the clank- 
ing of a bondsman's chains, of proving to the world that 
the States whom God had joined together no man could 
cast asunder, of demonstrating to the attentive nations that 
this government of the people, for the people, and by the 
people should not perish from the earth. 

Let us not forget how still vastly greater than in 1864 
is our strength as well as our opportunity in 1902. The 
temple is completed, and from its dome Liberty holds a 
torch to light the world. 

For thousands of years the world has been growing 
toward this consummation, the dedication of this great 
work, the coming to manhood of the American republic, 
the supremacy among the nations of this government of 
the people. 

For nearly three centuries we have been on our way 
from Plymouth Rock to the Golden Gate. 

What a transcontinental procession! Not at all times 
a peaceful one, nor always one of triumph, the sword and 
the gun oft supplanting the olive branch, and wayside 
graves like monumental urns marking many a stage along 
this life journey of a nation. 

First comes John Carver with his little band, their only 
charts and guides the Bible and the Bill of Rights they 
drew up in the cabin of the Mayflower. Down through more 
than one hundred and fifty years this procession slowly 
moves in safe obscurity, growing like a mountain stream 
into a river by the commingling of its waters with those 
of many tributaries. At last, out of the darkness of colo- 



152 FROM PLYMOUTH ROCK TO GOLDEN GATE 

nial life it emerges into the faint light of a nation's dawn- 
ing. There are now many captains of many bands, but 
with difficulty held together. George Washington and 
Alexander Hamilton and John Adams lead, and behind 
them march abreast the Puritan and the Cavalier, to whom 
alike the guns at Bunker Hill were a call to arms. They 
fight the great fight for national independence, and then 
this procession, now a nation, laurel crowned, resumes its 
march with Washington, the Virginian, at its head. From 
the Atlantic it advances, crossing rivers, climbing moun- 
tains, ever following the sun. Before it forests fall, and 
behind it golden fields mark the fertility of its footfall. 
Cities, towns, and hamlets note its resting places, in every 
one of which the church and the schoolhouse show the 
impress of the Puritan. 

New leaders appear — Marshall from Virginia, and Web- 
ster from Masaschusetts — holding aloft the Ark of the 
constitution, a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of 
fire by night, leading the nation along the only highway 
whereon it could cross the continent. 

Half the journey is made. The Puritan hundred has 
grown into the nation's millions, the thirteen colonies into 
many States. Suddenly the guns of Fort Sumter call a 
halt. The nation threatens to break in two, the procession 
to part asunder, when, lo, from out the ranks there steps 
"a tall man, sun-crowned, one who rises above the fog 
and smoke of public station," Abraham Lincoln, under 
whose leadership the nation, no longer half-slave and half- 
free, but wholly free, reunites, never to divide again, and 
the procession moves on, never to halt again until it reaches 
the Golden Gate, where stands guard California, "the 
youthful queen of the Pacific, in her robes of silver gor- 
geously inlaid with gold,", in her eyes that light of prophecy 
that unrolled the future as a scroll to Seward, when he 



FROM PLYMOUTH ROCK TO GOLDEN GATE 153 

predicted that the Pacific Ocean would one day be the 
chief theatre of the world's great hereafter. That day has 
dawned. Its morning star, the star of empire, is now 
rising above the horizon that rims the Pacific, and its first 
rays illmnine the Golden Gate. 

Was our journey ended at this portal of the sunset sea? 
For a while we thought so. But God disposes, and the 
end was not yet. Suddenly, like an alarm of fire at mid- 
night, the explosion of the Maine called us to arms, and 
we took upon our shoulders the burden of battle for the 
right of others to live and, like ourselves, be free; we sent 
our army for the first time from this continent to invade 
a foreign land, planted our flag upon the islands of the 
Orient seas, and brought them nearer to Plymouth Rock. 

The sentiment of my discourse now reads, "From Plym- 
outh Rock to Manila Bay, and not a step backward." 

So far we have overcome all difficulties, surmounted all 
obstacles. This is our hour of greatness, our hour of 
greatest power, and, therefore, our hour of greatest peril. 
This is our hour of greatest opportunity. 

The Republic therefore needs our prayers as much as 
it deserves our praises, our watchful care, our caution, 
our utmost zeal and strenuous endeavor as much as our 
most unbounded admiration. But yesterday with bowed 
head and bended knee, before humble altars and gilded 
shrines, in chapels and cathedrals, with grateful hearts, 
we offered up thanksgiving for God's unparalleled gen- 
erosity during the year now closing. May He have given 
as bountifully of His wisdom as of His wealth ! 

The seat of wealth and power that once found lodg- 
ment within the walls of Carthage, thence beneath the 
eagle's wings made Rome its home, thence to Constanti- 
nople traveled, and thence to Venice, where it lingered a 



154 FROM PLYMOUTH ROCK TO GOLDEN GATE 

while, and then guarded by the lion dwelt in London, 
again finds safe shelter beneath the eagle's wings. 

And yet, at this moment of prosperity, our country stands 
confronted by the gravest problems. Solve them it must. 
It can not stand still. Forward it must go, or to decay 
be doomed, as progress is the immutable law both of indi- 
vidual and national life. 

The trust that withered in Spain's palsied hands is now 
in our vigorous keeping. The dusky peoples of the Carib- 
bean and Hawaiian Isles and the Filipino millions look 
to us for light and guidance. Shall they look in vain? 
Shall God's untutored millions share not in our golden 
largess? Shall we bury our treasure, or with this treasure 
shall we gather increase? We have arrived at man's estate. 
Shall we live out our manhood in the narrow bounds 
our boyhood knew? Shall the sun-rimmed horizon of liv- 
ing unto self blind our aspirations and limit our endeavors? 
Shall we take no part in the world's affairs, and become 
a hermit nation? 

Neither individuals nor nations can live to themselves 
alone. We are our brothers' keepers. This nation in the 
great plans of the Almighty has its duty to perform in 
the working out of civilization. For its part of this great 
task it has been its whole life preparing. With prophetic 
ink in the sibylline book of fate there has long been writ- 
ten what it has to do. As the drop of rain starts but 
does not create the life lying dormant in the grain of 
wheat, as the flash of lightning reveals but does not pro- 
duce the visions of the night, so the flash of our victorious 
guns in the war with Spain simply revealed the new bur- 
dens and responsibilities that had been for years in prep- 
aration for our young shoulders. 

Shall we profit by this opportunity? Shall we be true 
to the memory of those we honor this evening? Shall we 



FROM PLYMOUTH ROCK TO GOLDEN GATE 155 

allow prosperity to destroy that strength of will and spirit 
of liberty that survived the hunger and the cold and the 
suffering of the winter of 1620 on the bleak New England 
coast? Shall w^e prove that wealth may accumulate, and 
yet men not decay? We are men of mighty days; shall 
we be equal to our days? 

I believe that we will continue to be equal to any oppor- 
tunity fate has in store for us, that we will bear our 
burdens and responsibilities with unbending shoulders suc- 
cessfully to the end, that we will do our duty in this new 
state of international life into which it has pleased God 
to place us, and that we will be faithful to our stewardship 
both beneath the rising and the setting sun. 

I believe that not in vain have we journeyed from 
Plymouth Rock to the Golden Gate, peopling a continent 
with a vast, a mighty, a God-fearing, a liberty-loving, and 
a prosperous people, and establishing and perpetuating as 
an example to the nations and a benediction to mankind 
government based solely upon the rights of man. 



THOMAS JEFFERSON 



(Delivered at a dinner given by the Alumni to President Alder- 
man of the University of Virginia, San 
Francisco, April, 1906.) 



MANY years ago, in a very old city of the dead, in 
old Virginia, I read on a modest shaft the following 
impressive epitaph: "Author of the Declaration of Amer- 
ican Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious 
Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia," and 
I knew, as I read, that I stood by the grave of one who 
had achieved immortality by making mortality more bear- 
able to his fellow man. 

On July 4, 1893, I was visiting my old home, Petersburg, 
Virginia, and I noticed that there was no celebration, no 
beating of drums, nor blowing of horns, no waving of 
flags, nor marching of troops, and I exclaimed to a friend : 
"Why this silence! This should not be. This day, of all 
the days, is Virginia's day, when every other State must 
salute her. On this day the Old Dominion has the right of 
the line. This is the birthday of American independ- 
ence, celebrated in every clime and on every sea, proclaimed 
in prose and sung in song wherever freedom blesses the 
children of men, and Virginia, above all others, should 
celebrate it with hallelujas and hosannas from the rising 
of the sun to the going down of the same, and cover with 
flowers that grave on Monticello's slope where sleeps her 
immortal son, Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Dec- 
laration of Independence." 



THOMAS JEFFERSON 157 

Proud, as I am, of being a citizen of California, this 
land "where summers never cease their endless chant of 
light and peace, whose moonlight poured for years untold 
has drifted down in dust of gold, whose morning splendor, 
fallen in showers, leaves ceaseless sunrise in her flowers," 
I envy the man born in that State that gave to the union 
Washington, Jefferson, and Marshall, one the father of 
his country, one the father of the constitution, one the 
father of the University of Virginia. 

Were I a Virginian, it would cause me to hold my head 
a little high to know that he also was a Virginian who 
without a beacon, without a chart, but with unwavering 
eye and steady hand, guided his country safe through dark- 
ness and through storm to the fulfillment of that proclama- 
tion of freedom that was penned by the hand of another 
Virginian, who with Washington, Madison, Monroe, and 
Tyler, entitled Virginia to be called the mother of Pres- 
idents. 

Were I a Virginian, my pride would know no bounds 
when I recalled that it was another Virginian who by his 
decisions secured the perpetuity of this Union, and made 
the constitution a band of steel instead of leaving it a 
rope of sand, who by his judicial statesmanship made the 
constitution the corner-stone of an empire boundless in its 
capacity for growth, made it possible for an American 
citizen to cross the continent from Plymouth Rock to the 
Golden Gate and always beneath the protecting aegis of 
the one flag that claims the glad reverence of Massachu- 
setts, Virginia, and California alike, and is cheered with 
equal enthusiasm at Harvard, Charlottesville, and Berkeley. 

Washington, Marshall, and Jeiferson were "tall men, sun- 
crowned, men who rose above the fog and smoke of public 
station," and we here this evening feel that it has been 
a great privilege to have studied at the college that Jeffer- 



158 THOMAS JEFFERSON 

son founded, and that bears the name of the State that 
produced these three men. All three builded better than 
they knew. Jefferson, when he made the Louisiana pur- 
chase, did not anticipate that his successors would cross the 
Rockies and join to the sisterhood of States California, 
"the youthful queen of the Pacific, with her robes of silver 
inlined with gold," nor did he dream that, in less than a 
century after his University opened her doors, one of her 
graduates would be the honored Chief Justice of a great 
commonwealth fronting the Orient, or that her president 
should in a distant clime, "where the West melts away 
into the rising East," proclaim to his fellow-countrymen 
the glory justly due to the father of the University of 
Virginia. 

Jefferson helped greatly to make possible this expansion, 
not merely because he believed in the people, in govern- 
ment of the people, by the people, and for the people, but 
because he believed in the education of the people, and 
worked towards that end; because he believed that govern- 
ment by the people must be by an educated people, that 
there must be not only primary education for the many, 
but higher education for the few "to form the statesmen, 
legislators, and judges on whom public prosperity and indi- 
vidual happiness so much depend," because he believed that 
"nothing more than education advances the prosperity, the 
power, and the happiness of a nation." 

By their works -ye shall know men. Sir Christopher 
Wren, standing beneath the dome of St. Paul's, exclaimed, 
"Si monumentum videres, circumspice." Thomas Jefferson, 
standing beneath the dome of the rotunda of the Univer- 
sity of Virginia, could as truthfully have said, ''Si monu- 
mentum videres, circumspice." Great as is his reputation 
as Governor of Virginia, Minister to France, and President 
of the United States, greater will be his title to fame as 



THOMAS JEFFERSON 159 

father of the University of Virginia. From its halls have 
come and will continue to come many statesmen, legislators, 
and judges to keep this people worthy of the independence 
Jefferson proclaimed. 

All hail to the University ! It is a light set upon a hill, 
and for ages it will shine as one of the brightest beacon 
lights of culture, whose rays shall dim the stars that sparkle 
o'er Atlantic and Pacific seas and all the lands 'twixt 
Monticello and where burns the Southern Cross. 



WILLIAM SPROULE 



(Delivered at a farewell dinner to William Sproule at Pacific 
Union Club, San Francisco, September 6, 1906.) 



MR. CHAIRMAN : When I see this magnificent ban- 
quet, these lights, this brilliant room, these distin- 
guished guests, and look at the guest in whose honor this 
is done, I realize that God is good to the Irish. 

This is the most difficult speech I have ever attempted. 
There are many men for whom it is a pleasure to make 
a farewell speech. One would willingly sit up all night in 
its preparation, if one were sure that such men would really 
go. But this is not so when it is one's dearest friend that is 
leaving. Then it is that you realize that it is not true that 
from the abundance of the heart one speaketh. Lovers 
speak but little when their hearts have most abundance. 

When Sproule told me that he was about to be mar- 
ried, I felt that I could not forgive him for abandoning 
me, until I saw his bride, and then I envied him. Now 
that he is taking both bride and himself away to make a 
distant city his permanent home, my loss is irreparable, 
my grief inconsolable. 

A poet has spoken of California as "the State that guards 
the dying day, whose burning tear, the evening star, drops 
silently to the waves afar." 

California, alas ! has had cause to drop many a burning 
tear during this year of our Lord, 1906, and now she 
must shed another burning tear, scalding hot from the fur- 
nace of her afflictions, when Sproule leaves. But her face 



WILLIAM SPROULE 161 

will be like a brighter day, sunshine and rain at once, a 
rain of tears for herself o'er the loss of so gifted a son 
of her adoption, the sunshine of her smiles for his unpar- 
alleled success. 

San Francisco lies in ashes at our feet, her palaces, her 
temples, and her marts shapeless masses of stone and brick 
and twisted iron, her columns crumbling in the dust, her 
church spires no longer pointing to the skies, her great- 
ness a memory, her future a hope, her greatest need men, 
"tall men, sun-crowned, men who rise above the fog and 
smoke of public station, men who can live and dare not 
lie." Such a man is William Sproule, and he is leaving 
San Francisco. Did I love him less, I would selfishly beg 
him to stay. But the sacrifice on his part would be too 
great. He goes to fulfill his destiny, and, if the past and 
present be prophetic of the future, we are confident of 
the brilliance of that fulfillment. 

You all know his history, his rise from an humble clerk- 
ship to the high and responsible position of freight traffic 
manager of the Southern Pacific. You have read this his- 
tory in the daily papers, and you share his pride in it. 
Sproule tells me confidentially that he has read it so often 
that he is beginning to believe it himself, and that now 
when he hears of the death of a very great man, he finds 
that he does not feel very well himself. 

But, seriously speaking, he may well be proud. He has 
had great opportunities, he has been equal to his oppor- 
tunities, and that is greatness. He came here a foreigner, 
poor and friendless. He leaves here known, respected, 
admired, loved, and honored by the community. No one 
ever came here more unknown or with fewer friends. No 
one has ever left here better known or with more or truer 
friends. 



162 WILLIAM SPROULE 

Versatile in talents, strong in character, firm in purpose, 
and complete in performance, it will require more than 
one man to be his successor, and the big men of New 
York will take notice when this young Lochinvar comes 
out from the West. 

May health, happiness, and high esteem continue to illu- 
minate his climbing fortunes, and may kindly circumstance 
lead his footsteps often back to the Golden Gate, where 
many warm hearts will ever extend him glad welcome. 



CARNEGIE LIBRARIES 



(Delivered at the laying of the corner-stone of the Carnegie 
Library, Pacific Grove, November g, 1907.) 



MR. CHAIRMAN, Ladies and Gentlemen : I deem 
it a privilege to be invited to take part in these 
proceedings, to be so honored by Pacific Grove. I con- 
gratulate you on your city. You can look back with satis- 
faction on your past; you can contemplate with pride your 
present ; you can look forward with confidence to your 
future, assured of the fulfillment of your fondest hopes 
and highest ambitions; you can justifiably hang on your 
outer wall a banner bearing the announcement, "Watch Us 
Grow." 

I regret that I have no address worthy of this occasion, 
and must beg you to be content with a few desultory 
remarks. 

It has been the fashion to declaim against the money 
of millionaires as "tainted money." This was, of course, 
before the present financial stringency, when at least some 
money was visible to the naked eye. If this stringency 
continues much longer, I am afraid it will be difficult for 
most of us to even recognize money at sight, much less to 
distinguish between the tainted and untainted coin. 

But, as I have said, it has been the fashion to declaim 
against money as tainted money, because the owner of it 
has accumulated too much of it. If it be true that money 
becomes tainted when too much of it is accumulated in 



164 CARNEGIE LIBRARIES 

the same exchequer, I know of no better way of removing 
the taint than by devoting it to some great public purpose. 

The University of Chicago loses none of its splendid 
opportunities for educating the youth of the Middle West 
because of the fact that the money that has built it up and 
afforded it its great educational facilities was a part of 
the Rockefeller millions. The Stanford University is no 
less a benefaction of incalculable value to the youth of the 
Pacific Coast because its foundation and support are the 
dollars that came from the railroad coffers. 

And so, the libraries that adorn countless towns in many 
climes and serve as beacon lights of culture to so many 
nations, let their light shine before men no less brilliantly 
because they are the gifts of a millionaire, who, by his 
broadminded philanthropy, has immortalized the name of 
Carnegie. 

Men climb to dizzy heights of fame by many different 
ladders. By many means have men achieved immortality. 
For many reasons have men's names been enrolled in the 
Hall of the Immortals. The upward paths of some, like 
Caesar and Napoleon, may be traced by footprints stained 
with blood; of others, like Lincoln and Washington, by 
the wise government the one founded and the other secured, 
rather than by the victories they won ; and of Andrew Car- 
negie by the multiplicity and magnitude of his gifts to 
science, to letters, and to education. He has made possible 
the collection of books in every town where the English 
language is spoken. 

Books are our best, our wisest, and most faithful com- 
panions. They instruct, they entertain, and they console 
us. Books, like searchlights, penetrate the darkness of the 
past and supplement our fading memories. Like the noon- 
day sun, they illumine the present, and make our limited 
field of vision almost boundless as Omniscience. They are 



CARNEGIE LIBRARIES 165 

bridges that span the centuries, bringing the remotest times 
near neighbors to the present. They annihilate space and 
time, and make our libraries whispering galleries wherein 
the faintest voice from the most distant place and time 
can reach the dullest ear. 

By books alone can man preserve the sayings and the 
songs of the singers and the seers of all the yester-years. 

Like a garden without flowers, like a night without stars, 
would be a land without books. 

Libraries are orchestras, and they play for us all the 
symphonies; they are choirs, and they sing for us the 
world s do.xologies. 

Libraries are tix^JLvrifS- and therein are performed al' 
earth's tragedies and life's comedies. 

Libraries are laboratories wherein science works out her 
miracles; they are observatories, and therein men find their 
answers in the stars. 

Libraries are pantheons where every soul may solace seek, 
and every worshiper his God may find, from the Christian 
Jesus to the Chinese Joss; they are schools where every 
pupil may his lesson learn. 

Libraries are storehouses wherein men store the wisdom 
and the experience of the ages. Destroy them, and all 
our yesterdays might as well have never been. 

I know that there is a different theory from the above, 
for a poet has said that a civilized man can live without 
books, but that civilized man can not live without cooks. 
This is not true. Many a civilized man would have lived 
longer but for his cook. I therefore stick to my eulogy. 

All praise then, and honor, and gratitude to the founder 
of this library, Andrew Carnegie. 



SOUTHERN COOKING 



(Delivered at a dinner given by Thomas H. Williams, 
San Francisco, March, 1908.) 



WE WERE invited here this evening to partake of 
some Southern cooking. The invitation created an 
appetite. As a theme for a speech Southern cooking is 
an inspiraiior.. It is worthy of -lie genius of a Shake- 
speare, of the eloquence of a Cicero, and of the pen of a 
Bulwer-Lytton, who wrote, as you know, that civilized man 
can live without books, but that he can not possibly live 
without Southern cooks and Southern cooking. 

It has nourished many great men — Presidents, generals, 
and jurists, Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Madison, Mon- 
roe, Marshall, Lee, and Stonewall Jackson, the statesman 
who wrote the Declaration of Independence, the President 
and general who gave to this government the possibility 
of its then beginning, the judge who by his construction 
of the constitution secured to this government perpetuity. 

It has nourished a brave and gallant people, one not 
always wisely brave, but always assuredly so. 

When their war for secession was over, their battles 
fought and lost, their armies broken and scattered, their 
leaders dead or captives, and their conquered banner but 
a funeral shroud, a party of ragged and barefooted Con- 
federates were slowly trudging home, discussing as they 
went the feasibility of migrating to some new country to 
rebuild their shattered fortunes, when one of them remarked : 
"You fellows can do as you like, but I am going home, 



SOUTHERN COOKING 167 

kiss my wife, plant a crop, and if the Yanks fool with me, 
I'll lick 'em again." 

Only Southern cooking could have produced such men, 
such 3. people. 

I do not f 01 get t^^e glories of a New England boiled 
dinner. I know that it is responsible for the Boston lea 
Party and Bunker Hill, that it is one of the corner-stones 
of the republic, that upon it are founded the church, the 
schoolhouse, and the town meeting, and that but for its 
sustaining power Webster would not have achieved immor- 
tality, and yet it pales its ineffectual indigestibility before 
that trinity of Southern cooking, those chef-d'oeuvres of a 
Southern kitchen, sweet potatoes, corn bread, and o'possum. 

I rejoice that the Southern men were so few, or this 
union might have been divided. Southern cooking been con- 
traband in California, and we would have missed this enjoy- 
able evening, this sumptuous banquet, this bounteous hos- 
pitality. 

All glory, then, to Southern cooking, all gratitude to 
the host of this Southern feast. 



AN EASTER TALK 



(Delivered at a literary and musieal entertainment for the benefit 

of Maria Kip Orphanage, San Francisco, at 

the residence of W. F. Goad.) 



LADIES AND Gentlemen: The change from the fair 
maidens who just sang so sweetly to the man who 
is about to address you is rather abrupt. It could not 
possibly have been more so, unless either one of my two 
colleagues had taken my place. I was about to say that 
the change reminded me of the hooting of an owl following 
the singing of the lark; but I can not flatter myself with 
even the appearance of wisdom, as a fellow-Bohemian, at 
the Christmas jinks, recently told me, after hearing me 
speak, that I did not look clever. 

This is my first appearance in a variety entertainment 
of this kind. Two other members of this troupe, and who 
do this kind of specialty business, are waiting just outside 
of the stage door of this theatre. They are playing it 
rather low down on me, and are ready to fold their tents 
and steal away if they see me thrown out. If, when 
I finish, you feel that you can not stand anything more, 
you would do well to leave. I would, however, advise 
you to remain, as I do not think that either of these gen- 
tlemen, with all their talent, can do worse than I am doing. 
When they speak you will see suspended over the stage the 
notice: "Do not shoot the performers; they are doing 
the best they know how !" As for me, I throw myself 
on your mercy. 



AN EASTER TALK 169 

You are met together, at the price of one dollar per 
head, for charity. I beesech you to devote one dollar's 
worth of it to me. 

It is said that anything, moral or immoral, good or bad, 
goes if charity is its ostensible purpose, as charity covers 
a multitude of sins. Let me have the benefit of this cov- 
ering. In search for an idea I have in vain laid bare my 
mind — cut my mental dress low, as it were. Let your 
charity extend to mental as well as physical decollete. In 
society the one needs a covering as much as the other. 

On Sunday last, had you asked of the little ones of the 
world the meaning of Easter, they would have answered 
that it was that particular time of the year set apart for 
staining eggs. Thus is the entire Christian scheme of salva- 
tion reduced to a child's sport, and the faith of all Mayfair 
that the death of the Savior had enabled it to sin with 
impunity found to be resting upon an eggshell. 

Were that egg to sniash, and you had each one to rely 
for salvation upon your own sacrifices, I do not think that 
any one of you would ever forgive the hen for her poor 
workmanship. 

If the Lenten season, with its fasting and penance and 
prayer, had not cleansed your consciences free from all 
sin, I would hesitate before thus disclosing to you how 
slight is the foundation for a faith that is so unselfish on 
your part. 

If, however, the egg can be used to suggest the weakness 
of an old faith, it is also utilized to illustrate the strength 
of a new faith called evolution. We were recently told 
by Professor Le Conte that the whole doctrine of evolution 
is found in the egg. But here again we find ourselves 
in trouble. We know what is to be evolved from the egg. 
We know that there will come a hen who will lay other 
eggs and cackle to her neighbors much thereover; or, may- 



170 AN EASTER TALK 

hap, a rooster who, in plumage gay that should not be 
his, will crow with exceeding pride over another's achieve- 
ments. But we do not know whence came the first egg, 
what hen laid it, or who laid the hen. 

Away, however, with these doubts. This Easter season 
is a time not for doubt, but for hope's fruition, when nature 
fulfills its promise in every budding plant and flowering 
tree, and offers up the perfumes of spring as the incense 
of its gratitude, teaching that from seeming death new 
life may come. 

I am not here to preach a sermon. My reverend father 
has always attended to that part of the business, using 
me, probably, as a terrible example. But I can not refrain 
from saying, while in this train of thought, that the object 
of this particular charity whose cause we are trying to 
assist, to wit : the care of motherless and fatherless chil- 
dren, helps to faith, and suggests that sentiment which must 
have been uttered by every god who is a god, ** Suffer the 
little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for 
of such is the kingdom of heaven." In behalf of them 
I am willing to forego even that small portion of your 
charity that a few moments ago I desired for myself. 

Theirs is the true religion, a faith born of love, by love 
sustained; its altar a mother's breast, its shrine a mother's 
heart, its song of praise a mother's benediction, its sweetest 
music her lullaby. She is the high priestess of their religion, 
the goddess of their idolatry. 

Children love without the need of hope, they trust with- 
out thought of questioning, they gather the rose not knowing 
of the thorn or of the serpent underneath. To them there 
is no tree of good and evil, and the Garden of Eden is 
still their playground. To them there is no resurrection, 
because they know not of the crucifixion. To their eyes 
the crown appears without the shadow of the cross behind 



AN EASTER TALK 171 

it. To them time and space are not. The past without a 
beginning and the future without an ending they encom- 
pass within the narrow limits of the present, while the 
sun and moon are within their reach, and their tiny hands 
stretch out to pluck a star as a jewel for their beloved. 
To them all things are possible. They wave the magic 
wand of love and grasp the infinite. To them dreams are 
real, and Dreamland lies just beyond the sunset. Do you 
not believe it ? Then listen to Little Boy Blue : 

"O mother, my love, if you'll give me your hand, 

And go where I ask you to wander, 
I will lead you away to a beautiful land — 

The Dreamland that's waiting out yonder. 
We'll walk in a sweet posie-garden out there. 

Where moonlight and starlight are streaming. 
And the flowers and the birds are filling the air 

With the fragrance and music of dreaming. 

There'll be no little tired-out boy to undress. 

No questions or cares to perplex you. 
There'll be no little bruises or bumps to caress. 

No patching of stockings to vex you ; 
For I'll rock you away on a silver-dew stream. 

And sing you asleep when you are weary. 
And no one shall know of our beautiful dream 

But you and your own little dearie. 

And when I am tired I'll nestle my head 

In the bosom that's soothed me so often, 
And the wide-awake stars shall sing, in my stead, 

A song which our dreaming shall soften ; 
So, mother, my love, let me take your dear hand, 

And away through the starlight we'll wander — 
Away through the mist to the beautiful land — 

The Dreamland that's waiting out yonder.* 



*Eugene Field's "Mother and Child." 



172 AN EASTER TALK 

When, therefore, the mother dies, and the child's altar 
loses its priestess, the shrine of his idolatry is robbed of its 
divinity, and the walls of his temple fall about his feet 
like broken toys, and the present seems a starless midnight 
beneath whose horizon no Easter morning awaits expectant 
the resurrection of the Lord, childhood's loss moves heaven 
and earth to tenderest sympathy, and its weeping touches 
every heart above and beneath the stars. Help, then, the 
orphans! you will not lose thereby, but will lay up treas- 
ures, for the Son of God has said: "Inasmuch as you have 
done it unto one of the least of these little ones, you have 
done it unto me." 



THE UNIVERSITY AND THE STATE 



(Delivered at the Commencement-Day exercises of the University 
of California, May 17, 1893.) 



MR. PRESIDENT: By calling on me at this moment 
you have shown that you know my weakness. I like 
to follow a woman. But, in this regard, I am in the 
fashion here at Berkeley, as the whole college this year 
follows a woman, the fair young medalist. I wish to say, 
however, that I am compelled to differ from this young 
lady in her theory of life. Her theme today was "Discon- 
tent, a Factor of Progress." Her rule does not always hold 
good. If she and the other young women graduates are 
factors in progress, and they are very fair ones, I boldly 
proclaim that there is no discontent in ?ne. My condition 
passes beyond content into realms of bliss. 

Today, for the first time since I was old enough to know 
better^ I proudly admit that I am a bachelor. I did not 
know that a bachelor could be so interesting and fair to 
look upon until I beheld this forenoon the new accessions 
to our ranks. It seems rather odd to call a woman a 
bachelor. I am perfectly willing, however, to surrender 
my title to any one of them, and will lay down my arms 
to her who will hold out hers. I am, therefore, glad to 
be here. This university is doing a grand work. Nature 
made woman a thing of beauty. This university, in open- 
ing its doors to woman and awarding her its highest honors, 
is making her a thing of thought. The better equipped 
women are mentally, the more cultivation men must acquire. 



174 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE STATE 

This makes me keenly regret that I did not secure a wife 
before this broader education made women more discrimi- 
nating in the selection of a husband. 

But, apart from these considerations, I am glad to be 
with you today, because I delight in college associations. I 
like the atmosphere of university life. I believe in univer- 
sity education. I believe that the education of the many 
springs from the higher education of the few. I believe 
that the common schools of America find their inspiration 
in and spring from the universities, as do the rivers from 
mountain lakes high up near the clouds. I believe in sus- 
taining most liberally all universities, and most especially 
this one, because it is the university of the State of 
California. 

Love of culture and a due appreciation of university edu- 
cation attract my good wishes for the success of every col- 
lege. But love of my State, my pride in her greatness, 
and my hopes for her future enlist all my interest, energy, 
and ambition in helping in the building up to a position 
worthy of California that institution of which all Califor- 
nians should be the most proud, the State university. 

Every college man regards with reverence, affection, and 
pride his alma mater. Its memory recalls the ambitions, 
the aspirations, the struggles, and the friendships of his 
early manhood. If, however, you associate with his alma 
mater the name of his State, you add a patriotic glow to 
his college enthusiasm, and patriotism stimulates culture. 

My alma mater is the university of Virginia. I know 
the feeling that exists in the Old Dominion in this con- 
nection. Every Virginian who has attended that university 
regards her diploma as if it were a patent of nobility, and 
loves the university more because he loves his State so 
much. 



THE UNIVERSITY AND THE STATE 175 

This feeling I would foster and stimulate in California 
towards the university of California, and I appeal to 
regents, professors, and alumni especially in this regard. 
You have your hand on the plow, follow the furrow to the 
end. 

You, regents, hold in your keeping a sacred trust, you 
have assimied a heavy responsibility, you will be held to 
a strict accountability. The people of this State are at 
last wide awake to the great importance of your duties. 
Continue to devote to your task an attention as unselfish 
as it is conscientious, as intelligent as it is earnest, and 
the regency of this university will be, as it should be, the 
highest honor a citizen can receive, a certificate that he 
is a patriot, a gentleman, and a scholar. 

You, professors, are the real helmsmen of the Ship of 
State. In every counting room, professional office, and pub- 
lic position in this State your influence must prevail more 
and more as your graduates increase in number. Magnify 
your office. 

You, alumni, have the power to magnify this university. 
Bear in mind that the stronger and better equipped your 
university becomes, the stronger and better equipped will 
your State be, and the more reason will you have for being 
proud of both. 

State pride is the vital spirit of State prosperity, and 
we all know what abundant reasons we have for our pride 
in California. Her destiny is a glorious one. The imag- 
ination almost runs wild when one attempts to recall how 
nature has blessed her. The republic has been called "A 
Sisterhood of States." In this sisterhood there is none 
fairer than California, the daughter of the setting sun, a 
"Fair Vestal throned by the West." Around her brow a 
wreath of orange blossoms, o'er her head a bower of roses, 
beneath her feet a carpet of wild flowers, in her eyes the 



176 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE STATE 

blue of the violet, and in her hair a golden sheen. That 
graceful poet who once lived among you and who sang 
so sweetly, in whose verse is the freshness of the morning, 
the quiet of the evening, and the soft light of the rising 
sun, Edward Rowland Sill, felt California's charm and 
tuned his harp to sing her praises. He described her as 

"The land that guards the dying day, 
Whose burning tear, the evening star, 
Drops softly to the waves afar ; 
The land where summers never cease 
Their sunny chant of life and peace; 
Whose moonlight, poured for years untold. 
Has drifted down in dust of gold : 
Whose morning splendors, fallen in showers. 
Leave ceaseless sunrise in her flowers. 
******** 

"O wondrous gift, in goodness given. 
Each hour anew our eyes to greet. 
An earth so fair — so close to heaven 
'Twas trodden by the Master's feet." 



THE WAR WITH SPAIN 



(Delivered at Reno, Nevada, before the State University, 
June 2, i8g8.) 



MR. PRESIDENT, Gentlemen of the Faculty, 
Young Ladies and Gentlemen of the Graduat- 
ing Class : I know of no more responsible task, nor one 
that should receive more serious attention, than that of 
addressing a class of graduates, young men and women 
who have reached the parting of the roads where the trav- 
eler must make the correct choice or go astray; who have 
before them their first real problem, whose correct solution 
must determine their lot in life ; who have reached the 
end of playtime, whose aftermath is work which must result 
ill or well as it is wisely or unwisely performed; who 
must no longer make mistakes ; who must now make their 
choice, knowing that "whoever chooses must choose aright. 
Wrong choice carries its own destruction" ; and who must 
be told that "earth bears no balsam for mistakes." Bearing 
all this in mind, I would like to develop these thoughts 
along a line personal to yourselves. But there is today one 
question that above all others demands consideration, and 
therefore I have determined to talk to you upon the moment- 
ous problem that recently confronted this nation, and to 
endeavor to help you to the conclusion, if you have not 
already reached it, that the President and Congress have 
attempted the only solution that was possible under the 
circumstances, and that would leave us still worthy of the 



178 THE WAR WITH SPAIN 

sacred trust of protection to the weak which God has always 
imposed upon the strong. 

I feel that I can in no other way so forcibly impress 
upon you the grave importance of right judgment and the 
fatality of wrong judgment, the necessity of honestly, fear- 
lessly, and wisely solving the great problems of life, and 
the disasters that follow their wrong solution. 

I would have you now and always seek first to find rea- 
sons for believing your country to be in the right, rather 
than to hasten (as do too many) to prove that she is in 
the wrong : I would have your first impulse patriotic rather 
than critical. While every true American is for his country, 
right or wrong, yet how much more strenuously is he her 
supporter, if he believes that she is in the right ! A nation, 
like an individual, must choose aright. 

When the news of the Maine disaster shocked the nation 
and electrified seventy millions of freemen, and Congress, 
the South joining hands with the North, by unanimous 
vote, appropriated fifty millions to the country's needs; 
when the President's call for volunteers was responded to 
instantly alike in New Orleans and in Boston, and the 
Rebel yell mingled in patriotic chorus with the Federal 
cheer; when the grandson of Grant enlisted upon the staff 
of the nephew of Robert E. Lee, and the gray and the 
blue blended into the red, white, and blue; when Balti- 
more welcomed with Southern hospitality the celebrated 
Sixth Massachusetts Regiment which in 1861 it had mobbed 
with Southern hate, giving it flowers and cheers in place 
of stones and jeers, hugs and kisses in place of kicks and 
hisses, and upon Baltimore's banner was engraved **For our 
country and humanity : Baltimore and Boston clasp hands. 
May the memory of 1861 be effaced by the welcome of 
1898"; when the South consecrated its allegiance to our 
one flag with the death of one of her sons, Ensign Bagley, 



THE WAR WITH SPAIN 179 

the war's first victim, and with his blood sealed the reunion 
of the States, I felt that only a great and just cause was 
worthy of such manifestation of the absolute and eternal 
oneness and indissolubility of our Union, and that the 
war was not a mistake, and was worth all its cost. When 
the sailor Meek uttered, as he died aboard the ill-fated 
Winslow, "Tell them I died like a man," I felt that such 
a man should not be sacrificed but in a holy and just war, 
and I believe that the cause for which he died is worthy 
of the sacrifice. I hope that you will in your cool judg- 
ment as well as in your glowing patriotism fully agree 
with me. 

Hundreds of years ago there journeyed from palace to 
court, from court to church, from the throne to the altar, 
and from priest to king, a navigator who believed that the 
world was much larger than Roman emperor or vandal 
chief or Spanish monarch had ever dreamed, and that 
there were undiscovered lands rich in silver and gold that 
had never paid tribute to Rome, Constantinople, or Madrid. 
This man was Columbus, and in Spanish ships he crossed 
the trackless seas, and revealed this continent to an aston- 
ished world. Such veneration have we always shown for 
the name of this navigator that in 1893 we gave his name 
to that White City by the Lake where all the children of 
the sons of men, from Greenland's icy mountains to Afric's 
burning sands, and from the wave-washed islands of many 
seas, gathered in friendly competition much that was best 
and most beautiful and useful in art and science and skill 
and trade and agriculture and manufacture, and we entitled 
it the Columbian Exposition, and to it not only were there 
sent from Spain truthful reproductions of those famous ships 
that brought Columbus to these shores, but also there came 
as the honored guests of this government royal representa- 
tives of that government that started Columbus on his 



180 THE WAR WITH SPAIN 

inspired voyage. And yet in 1898, after a lapse of only 
five years, these two nations are at war, and the big guns 
that then were but instruments of courtesy, and thundered 
only in friendly salutations, now are become engines of 
death, and belch forth missiles carrying destruction to 
American and Spanish ships. 

For years the nations of Europe have been making the 
seas populous with their floating leviathans of w^ar, while 
they have made the land resonant with the roll of drum, 
blast of trumpet, and tread of marching armies. Their 
ever watchful sentinels have been for years standing guard 
with bayonets crossed o'er national boundaries, while their 
mobilized fleets have given constant w^arning to neighbor- 
ing thrones. "At every bastioned frontier, every State, Sus- 
picion, sworded, standing by the gate." 

During these years all our ways have been ways of pleas- 
antness, and all our paths have been paths of peace, and 
this republic has gazed with wonder, unmixed with alarm, 
at these mighty armaments, while its people's shoulders, 
unbent by military burdens, have stooped only in thriftful 
toil, and wealth has filled their coffers that needed no 
soldier guard. 

During this time the United States has maintained an 
army and built a navy in no way commensurate with its 
resources, and, as we now discover, insufficient for its needs, 
apparently oblivious of the need of either. 

Therefore today in this land, to which war seemed most 
remote, the call to arms rang out with all the suddenness 
of an alarm of fire at midnight, and we can hardly realize 
that from counting room and college hall and scholar's 
desk and workman's bench our citizens have rushed to enlist 
beneath the stars and stripes to fight a foreign foe upon 
foreign soil, and that the flag flying from nearly every 
housetop means war and not a holiday. 



THE WAR WITH SPAIN 181 

For the first time the army and navy of the United 
States leave this continent to invade a foreign land. Never 
shall I forget the day when the California and other regi- 
ments embarked for Manila. There was cheering, singing, 
booming of guns, and waving of flags, and there were 
mothers and wives whose hearts were heavy and whose eyes 
were lusterless with tears that would flow. Never shall I 
forget the succeeding day when those three ships in stately 
procession steamed along the city front and out through 
the Golden Gate towards the Orient. The flags dipped a 
parting salute, from a thousand housetops good-byes were 
wafted to those departing heroes, from loving lips went 
the sad adieu, "Good luck to those who see the end, good- 
bye to those who fall." Why were these sons and fathers 
and brothers and lovers leaving home in this martial array? 
For territorial conquest? No! For this nearly all the 
other nations are now battling, or on the eve thereof. Eng- 
land is fighting a pathway for civilization up the Nile, and 
leaving opportunities for English colonization in the wake 
of her victorious armies. France and England are almost 
locking horns in their scramble for territory in Western 
and Central Africa. Germany and England are both ambi- 
tious for aggrandizement in Southern Africa. Russia, Ger- 
many, and England are jealously watching one another in 
their preliminary steps for parceling out China. But the 
United States has hitherto refrained from acquiring terri- 
tory beyond this continent, and has pledged itself not to 
appropriate Cuba by means of this war. Should other Span- 
ish possessions be taken by us, as some have been, it will be 
as an incident of the war, not as its cause or inspiration. 

Do we seek more power? No! Of what benefit would 
more power be to us, holding, as we do, that government 
exists not for its own aggrandizement, but only for the 



182 THE WAR WITH SPAIN 

benefit of the individual citizen, who wants not power, 
but liberty, happiness, and competence. 

Then why have we gone into a war that must cost us 
millions in money and the lives of many of our brave sol- 
diers and seamen? 

Possibly it might be answered that Cuba has been a 
nuisance, that we will no longer have a nuisance next door, 
and that we have determined to abate this nuisance. But 
such was not, though it could have been our motive. 

We have taken upon our shoulders the burden of battle, 
we have assumed the cost of carnage, we are prepared to 
wear crape for our kindred killed, because we have deter- 
mined to wage war for humanity's sake alone, because in 
the name of humanity, in the name of civilization, we have 
ordered Spain to leave Cuba. 

We have entered into a war out of which we could expect 
that there should come to us only the sufferings of those 
who fall in battle, and the grief of loved ones at home, 
only sacrifices and burdens, and the satisfaction of having 
ended misery and misrule in a neighboring land, and of 
duty done and protection to the weak maintained. We are 
fighting to carry out the principle upon which this govern- 
ment was founded, namely, the unlifting of the weak, and 
the resisting of the strong. Never before since the crusades 
has a nation embarked in such an unselfish adventure. 

We have heretofore been engaged in several wars. We 
have fought for our own liberty and independence; to 
maintain the sacredness of our flag upon the seas; to add 
Texas and California to our national domain; and to pre- 
serve this union. But this war is not for ourselves, but 
only for the right of others to live, and like ourselves to 
be free. 

Ex-President Harrison recently said: "Our foes now are 
not, thank God, those of our own household. That was a 



THE WAR WITH SPAIN 183 

war for the life of the union, this is a war for humanity. 
That for ourselves; this for the oppressed of another race. 
We could not escape this conflict. Spanish rule had become 
effete. We dare not say that we have God's commission 
to deliver the oppressed the world around. To the distant 
Armenians we could only send the succor of a faith that 
overcomes death and the alleviations which the nurse and 
the commissary can give. 

"But the oppressed Cubans and their starving women and 
children are knocking at our doors; their cries penetrate 
our slumbers. They are closely tvithin what we have defined 
to be the sphere of American influence. We have said 'To 
us, not to Europe,' and we can not shirk the responsibility 
and the danger of this old and settled American policy. 
We have as a nation toward Cuba the same high commis- 
sion which every brave-hearted man has to strike down the 
ruffian who in his presence beats a woman or child and 
will not desist. For what, if not for this, does God make 
a man or a nation strong?" 

"The mission of this country," says Richard Olney, lately 
Secretary of State, "if it has a mission, as I verily believe 
it has, is not merely to pose, but to act — and, while always 
governing itself by the rules of prudence and common 
sense, and making its own special interests the first and 
paramount objects of its care, to forego no fitting oppor- 
tunity to further the progress of civilization practically as 
well as theoretically, by timely deeds, as well as by elo- 
quent words. There is such a thing for a nation as a 
'splendid isolation,' as when for a worthy cause, for its 
own independence or dignity or vital interests it unshrink- 
ingly opposes itself to a hostile world. But isolation that 
is nothing but a shirking of the responsibilities of high 
place and great power is simply ignominious." 



184 THE WAR WITH SPAIN 

Before the first gun was fired many of us were irreso- 
lute and full of doubt as to the necessity or justice of the 
war. As a nation we are said to be very irresolute and 
very full of doubt up to the point when we wake the 
"drumming guns that have no doubt," after which there 
is no more irresolution till the last shot is fired. But, as 
there were some who continued to denounce President Cleve- 
land long after even the British Prime Minister had admit- 
ted that this government in the Venezuela matter was act- 
ing within its right and according to its traditions, so there 
are some of us who still challenge the necessity of this 
war. Fortunately those who so think are in the minority, 
and probably have no flags as yet flying over their homes 
and offices. Such a patriot, whose heart is not in the 
struggle, would never have made the name of Dewey rival 
that of Nelson in immortality. 

I wish your patriotism and mine to be able to hold up 
its head and challenge the justification of mankind for its 
zeal in this fight. Thrice is he armed who knows his 
cause is just. 

Cuba was discovered in 1492 by Columbus on his first 
voyage, and was almost immediately colonized by the 
Spaniards in their peculiar manner, to wit, by exterminat- 
ing the natives, causing a native chief to exclaim to the 
missionaries of the Cross: *Tf there are Spaniards in 
heaven, I prefer to go to hell." After four hundred years 
of Spanish rule in Cuba, aptly named the "Gem of the 
Antilles," the paradise of the Tropics, fertile in soil beyond 
all compare, rich in all mineral wealth, and capable of 
great commercial development, is today a political, agri- 
cultural, commercial, and financial wreck, whose most act- 
ive business and trade is that of grave-digging, and where 
there is neither "peace nor war, but desolation and distress, 
misery and starvation." Less in area than the State of 



THE WAR WITH SPAIN 185 

New York and with a smaller population than the city 
of New York, it pays its Governor- General a salary as 
large as that received by the President of the United States, 
and is burdened with a debt of $300,000,000, incurred by 
its alien rulers mostly to feed fat a host of foreign officials, 
and in crushing the liberties of its people. 

Since 1777 the supreme power in this island has been 
bestowed upon a Governor- General, who has been invested 
with the absolute power of the commandant of a city dur- 
ing the time of siege. 

Since that time office, power, patronage, distinction, and 
rank in their native land have been denied to all Cubans, 
and since that time race hatred, **a mountain of hate and 
a sea of blood," between the blacks and the Creoles on 
the one side and the Spaniards on the other has been the 
cause of Cuba's troubles, whereby this poor land, once 
called "the ever faithful isle," has been torn and rent 
asunder until today it is a shambles and a pesthouse. 

One insurrection has followed close upon another, the 
cry of liberty bursting from the dying lips of a captured 
rebel leader, being instantly caught up by some successor. 

There was an insurrection in 1829, another in 1848 
lasting three years, another in 1855, another in 1868 last- 
ing ten years, and another in 1895 now waging. 

During all this period Spain has been not only a poor 
mother to Cuba, but a bad neighbor to us. 

The Cuban question is not a new one to us. For a 
century it has with varying intensity demanded our con- 
sideration. From Jefferson to Buchanan eight of our Presi- 
dents have advocated the annexation of Cuba. In 1809 
Jefferson prophesied its annexation, and in 1823 John 
Quincy Adams repeated this prophecy. From time to time 
we have apprehended its acquisition by some other Euro- 
pean power, and we have repeatedly announced that we 



186 THE WAR WITH SPAIN 

would not allow this island to pass from Spain to any 
other power. 

The probability that the Holy Alliance and King Ferdi- 
nand might make Cuba the base of operations against 
these revolted South American provinces led to the mes- 
sage of President Monroe, in 1823, which was the official 
announcement of what is known as the Monroe Doctrine, 
to wit, that we will not allow the acquisition by force of 
any part of this continent (including Cuba) by any Euro- 
pean government. 

In 1825, when the South American countries had revolted, 
and Spain was endeavoring to drown the cause of freedom 
and the hatred of oppression in the blood of the oppressed, 
Henry Clay said: "If war should continue between Spain 
and the new republics, and Cuba should become the object 
and the theatre of it, its fortunes have such a connection 
with these United States that they could not be indifferent 
spectators, and the possible contingencies of such a pro- 
tracted war might bring upon this government of the 
United States duties and obligations the performance of 
which, however painful, they might not be at liberty to 
decline." 

In 1825 John Quincy Adams suggested to Spain an 
indirect purchase of Cuba by the United States. In 1848 
President Buchanan revived this idea of purchase and in 
1853 President Pierce renewed it. 

In 1854 the United States Ministers to England, France, 
and Spain jointly protested to the powers of Europe that 
the possession of Cuba by a foreign country was a menace 
to the peace of the United States, and proposed that Spain 
should be offered the alternative of taking two hundred 
millions of dollars for her sovereignty over Cuba or have 
it taken from her by force. 



THE WAR WITH SPAIN 187 

In 1869 Secretary Fish protested against Valmaceda's 
brutal warfare against the Cubans, and added that this 
government could not admit the indefinite protraction of 
such barbarities. 

President Grant, during the insurrection of 1868 to 1878, 
in vain offered his mediation for the purpose of effecting 
the peaceful separation of Cuba from Spain, and in 1875 
intimated that the United States might have to intervene 
in order to stop the loss and misery in Cuba. 

In 1873 we came to the verge of war over the execution 
by the Spanish officials of the captain and fifty-three of 
the crew of the Virginius, an American steamer, loaded 
with supplies and ammunition for the insurgents. 

In 1896 President Cleveland said: 

"The spectacle of the utter ruin of an adjoining coun- 
try, by nature one of the most fertile and charming on 
the whole globe, would engage the serious attention of the 
United States in any circumstances. It should be added 
that it can not be reasonably assumed that the hitherto 
expectant attitude of the United States will be indefi- 
nitely maintained. * * * By the course of events we may 
be drawn into such an unusual and unprecedented condition 
as will fix a limit to our patient waiting for Spain to end the 
contest. When the inability of Spain to deal successfully 
with the insurgents has become manifest, and it is demon- 
strated that her sovereignty is extinct in Cuba for all pur- 
poses of its rightful existence, and when a hopeless struggle 
for its re-establishment has degenerated into a strife which 
means nothing more than the useless sacrifice of human life 
and the utter destruction of the very subject matter of the 
conflict, a sitaution will be presented in which our obliga- 
tions to the sovereignty of Spain will be superseded by higher 
obligations which we can hardly hesitate to recognize and 
discharge." 



188 THE WAR WITH SPAIN 

President Cleveland offered mediation, and Spain replied 
that there was no effectual way to pacify Cuba unless it 
should begin with the actual submission of the insurgents 
to the mother country. Too well had a century's expe- 
rience of cruelty, oppression, extortion, bad faith, and 
tyranny the most crushing taught the Cubans what submis- 
sion to such a mother meant, too well did they know that 
there was poison on such a mother's lips, and that her 
embrace was death. There was consequently no submis- 
sion, no pacification, but, instead, the driving of 400,000 
people, the women and children, the old and helpless, the 
sick and infirm, all who would not or could not fight under 
either banner, into vile pens to starve and die, and the 
laying waste of the homes they had occupied, until the 
dead by the hundred thousands filled these shambles, putre- 
fying proofs of Spanish honor, Spanish pride, Spanish 
cruelty, and Spanish incompetency to govern Cuba. Wey- 
lerism added new terrors to inhumanity. 

You know what President McKinley has said of this 
policy of devastation and concentration : 

'Tt has utterly failed as a war measure. It was not 
civilized warfare. It was extermination. Against this 
abuse of the rights of war I have felt constrained on 
repeated occasions to enter the firm and earnest protest 
of this government. 

"The long trial has proved that the object for which 
Spain has waged the war can not be attained. The fire 
of insurrection may flame or may smolder with varying 
seasons, but it has not been and it is plain that it can not 
be extinguished by present methods. The only hope of 
relief and repose from a condition which can not longer 
be endured is the enforced pacification of Cuba. In the 
name of humanity, in the name of civilization, in behalf 
of endangered American interests which give us the right 



THE WAR WITH SPAIN 189 

and the duty to speak and to act, the war in Cuba must 
stop." 

Then came the blowing up of the Maine, and the kill- 
ing of two hundred and fifty-six American seamen in 
Havana harbor, and Spain's practical response, "What are 
you going to do about it?" Then war was declared because 
it was unavoidable, peace and war being not always of our 
own choosing. 

This government of the people, by the people, and for 
the people could no longer sit idly by and see a neigh- 
boring people destroyed by a tyrant because, forsooth, his 
sovereignty was imperiled by their struggle to be free. 

This Christian, human, civilized people could no longer 
listen to the sounds of suffering that every wind brought 
from Cuba, and could no longer witness scenes of cruelty 
surpassing the Inquisition, and not lift a hand to help, 
because, forsooth, a tyrant's honor would be thereby 
offended. 

This government, which had spent two millions in trying 
to stop filibustering, could no longer expend its revenues 
in helping Spain to continue its tyranny and cruelty; it 
could no longer have the administration of its internal 
affairs disturbed by this constant obtrusion of a question 
that Spain could not settle and which the conscience of 
our people demanded should be settled. 

This government and this people could not forget or 
forgive the treachery or the criminal incompetence that 
destroyed the Maine. 

We had in vain tried diplomacy. We had long listened 
to the promises that the Spaniards knew they could not 
keep, to proposals of reform that they knew they did not 
intend to grant. "We were dealing with a power whose 
methods have discredited her in the realms of truth and 
justice, a power which has never lifted its heel from the 



190 THE WAR WITH SPAIN 

neck of a subjugated people until compelled by force," a 
power that could not treat the insurgent Cubans with 
humanity because it could not understand humanity towards 
an insurgent. 

Therefore we are at war with Spain, and we propose 
to teach her by the lesson of shot and shell that Amer- 
ican gunners backed by the impulse of freedom to enslaved 
and suffering humanity are invincible, that a new day has 
dawned for Cuba, and its sun is the torch that liberty holds 
to light the world, a torch whose flame it is our sacred 
duty to keep burning. 

Over the victims of Spanish misrule floats the buzzard, 
and the eagle has winged its flight to drive this vulture 
from the Antilles. 

For centuries Spain commanded the attention of the civ- 
ilized world and the tribute of many nations. Her armies 
spread her power by land, and by sea her vessels carried 
her flag to many distant climes. By conquest and discovery 
she rivaled ancient Rome in greatness. In the sixteenth 
century Philip the Second had upon the continent of Europe 
no antagonist worthy of his steel. His army was the largest 
and best disciplined in the world, his fleet were more 
numerous than that of any other power. Upon his brow 
he could place the royal crowns of Spain, Portugal, Naples, 
and Sicily, and the ducal coronets of Milan and the Neth- 
erlands. In Africa and in Asia his domain extended, while 
in America he was head of an empire Caesar would have 
envied. Since the downfall of the Roman Empire no such 
preponderating power has existed in the world. 

Today she again attracts the attention of the civilized 
world, but this time by her dying groans rather than her 
shouts of victory, by the smoke of the smouldering ashes 
of her grandeur rather than the glare of the camp fires 
of her conquering armies, by the cries of the helpless vie- 



THE WAR WITH SPAIN 191 

tims of her cruelty and intolerance rather than by the hal- 
lelujahs of a free and prosperous people. 

For centuries possessing ports in many lands, colonies in 
every clime, and subject islands in many seas, today, at 
the close of this century, from her crown drop all her 
ocean jewels, and neither East nor Western Ind will longer 
do her obeisance. 

In the sixteenth century, when Boabdil, the last of the 
Moors, pausing in his retreat before the victorious Span- 
iards, looked down from an eminence, since called the Hill 
of Tears, for a last glimpse of the beautiful Alhambra, 
and wept, his royal mother reproached him for bewailing 
as a woman the kingdom he had not defended as a man. 
At the close of this century, as the last Spanish sovereign 
to rule over any part of this Western World weeps that 
the gem of the Antilles will never again glisten in the 
Spanish crown, and that the Spanish flag will no longer 
wave over the islands of the Eastern or Western sea, well 
may her royal son reproach her for bewailing as his mother 
the lands she had not protected as a queen, well may the 
Angel of Mercy reproach her for bewailing in her Spanish 
pride the million of subjects to whom her government 
had been merciless. 

The last Moorish sovereign looked back upon a land 
where his ancestors had ruled with tolerance, and where 
the Alhambra remained, a monument of Moorish art and 
genius to challenge the admiration of mankind as long 
as love of the beautiful holds sway in human souls. The 
last of the Spanish sovereigns to rule in Cuba looks back 
upon a land where she and her predecessors had ruled with 
savage intolerance, and where the Reconcentrado barracks 
will remain, monuments of Spanish brutality, at the descrip- 
tion of which mankind will shudder as long as one touch 
of nature makes the whole world kin. 



192 THE WAR WITH SPAIN 

Let crowned heads waste their sympathy upon this royal 
mother and son for the impending loss of a throne that 
does not deserve to stand. We, recalling the Moors whom 
the occupants of this throne centuries ago massacred, the 
Jews whom they pitilessly drove into helpless exile, the 
Protestant martyrs whom they burned at the stake, the 
natives of South America whom by millions upon millions, 
by whole races and nations, they remorselessly exterminated, 
and the Cubans whom the present queen has starved into 
the submission that comes with death, recalling the fact that 
for every one of the 200,000 soldiers the queen has sent 
into Cuba one Cuban man, woman, or child has died from 
starvation, or disease engendered thereby, that, though 
Spain has claimed sovereignty over the Philippines for four 
hundred years, she has conferred the blessing of civiliza- 
tion and Christianity upon only a small part thereof, neg- 
lecting and abusing her stewardship, we have sympathy only 
for the colonists upon whom the blighting shadow of this 
throne has so long fallen so fatally. 

The history of Spain has been the history of exagger- 
ated pride, overwhelming intolerance, and extreme cruelty, 
illuminated by the torch of Torquemada, while across it 
like a bar sinister runs a trail of blood from the cham- 
bers of the Inquisition. 

Earth bears no balsam for mistakes, whether they are 
committed by individuals or by nations, and Spain's mis- 
takes have left her shorn of her rich colonies, with a bank- 
rupt treasury, a ruined credit, a tottering throne, an illiterate 
population, and anarchy threatening her social existence. 
In her political philosophy the king, the noble, was every- 
thing, the people nothing. "Her heavy throne, ringed by 
swords and rich with titled show, is based on fettered mis- 
ery below." She chose the wrong road, and wrong choice 
has worked her destruction. The fate of all the empires 



THE WAR WITH SPAIN 193 

that have preceded her on this road to national decay 
awaits her. She is a dying empire. 

"Why died the empires? Like the forest trees 
Did nature doom them? Or did slow disease 
Assail their roots and poison all their springs? 
The old-time story answers; nobles, kings 
Have made and been the State, their names alone 
Its history holds ; its wealth, its wars their own : 
Their wanton will could raise, enrich, condemn. 
The toiling millions lived and died for them." 

For Spain the handwriting is on the wall. Her doom 
is sealed. It was long ago written in prophetic ink on 
sybilline leaves that we would be God's chosen messengers 
of his vengeance upon her for her sins. "A hideous skele- 
ton among living nations, a warning spectacle to the world, 
if her punishment had not overtaken her, men would have 
said 'there is no retribution, there is no God.' " 

I have stated that we have entered upon this war solely 
to put a stop to man's inhumanity to man in the Island 
of Cuba, expressly disavowing any design of territorial 
acquisition as to this island. Other things may have 
whetted our zeal, but they would not alone have caused 
war. But now that war has developed, destiny, that shapes 
our ends, hew them as we will, has opened her Pandora's 
box, and out has rushed a score of causative events that 
are leading and driving us into the international world, 
into the company of the nations, where that nation will 
win that has the power, and that one will hold that can. 
From a potential we must now become an actual great 
power, and upon the camera of the future we must cast 
one of the largest shadows or none at all. 

Destiny works in a mysterious way its wonders to per- 
form, and rarely reveals in advance what is forging in the 
workshop of fate. Behind the curtain of the future tomor- 



194 THE WAR WITH SPAIN 

row waits, holding in its hands the unexpected and the 
inevitable, towards which the unerring and irresistible mag- 
net of fate hurries the nations. 

Yesterday we were hedged in by the Chinese wall of 
American isolation, and deaf, blind, and heedless of the 
world without, we neither accepted the responsibilities of 
our true place among the nations nor secured its advant- 
ages. Yesterday's tomorrow finds that wall razed by the 
magic battering ram of destiny, and o'er its ruins marched 
the Philippine expeditions. No longer can our Ship of 
State keep within sight of the shores of an inland lake, 
but henceforth it must navigate the open sea. Upon this 
sea there are other ships, some large and powerful, others 
weak and small. With some of them we must in time 
come in conflict, with others we must sail in friendly com- 
panionship. If coming events have cast their shadows 
before, and the friendly and unfriendly utterances concern- 
ing us that are heard today in Europe are prophetic of 
future international relations, there is a certain mighty ship 
of State with which ours must eventually combine into 
an armada that shall rule the seas. 

If all this be not merely fancy, and the time shall come 
when with colonial possessions beyond the seas, with our 
Atlantic and Pacific Coasts tied more closely together by 
the Panama Canal, and with our flag floating over as 
large a navy as our political and commercial interests 
require, we are compelled to disregard Washington's fare- 
well address, and to form a foreign alliance, then, as Mr. 
Chamberlain recently said of the United States, I say of 
England : 

"There is a powerful and generous nation, using our 
language, bred of our race and having interests identical 
with ours. I would go so far as to say that, terrible as 
war may be, even war itself would be cheaply purchased 



THE WAR WITH SPAIN 195 

if, in a great and noble cause, the Stars and Stripes and 
the Union Jack should wave together over an Anglo-Saxon 
alliance." 

With the exception of England, none of the European 
nations give us credit for our real motives in this war. 
To most of them we are an impertinent, obtrusive, bully- 
ing, menacing, grasping people, not content with all of 
America, but ambitious of intruding into Europe, Asia, and 
Africa. Not only have they misconstrued our motives, but 
they have also doubted our courage and skill in battle, 
thinking us simply a nation of shopkeepers. Dewey's gun- 
ning has shattered this ill-disguised contempt of us, it has 
shown them, to use the words of a typical Yankee, that if 
we can slaughter our pigs in peace we can also slaughter 
our enemies in war, it has proven that, though in this land 
wealth has accumulated, men have not decayed, and that 
victory upon the waves is still the birthright of American 
seamen. 

By England alone are we entirely understood, and but 
for her recent firm stand Austria, Italy, France, Germany, 
and Portugal would most probably have attempted forcibly 
to stay our arms. This appreciation and friendly conduct 
have brought much closer together these two branches of 
the Anglo-Saxon race, whose laws and institutions are in 
a great measure the same, who "of all the great powers 
are the only two in whose national life freedom, in any 
real sense, has made her home," who "are the only two 
who have not by choice been bound in the frightful chains 
of that military madness which has turned the European 
continent into a camp," who "are both very cordially 
detested and very bitterly envied by most of the military 
powers," and of whom Jefferson said in 1825 : "These 
two nations holding cordially together have nothing to fear 
from the united world. They will be the models for the 



196 THE WAR WITH SPAIN 

regeneration of man, the sources from which representative 
government is to flow over the earth." 

It was the Anglo-Saxon race that shattered Spain's 
world-spreading empire, curbed the ambition of Philip the 
Second, crushed his Armada, and made England mistress 
of the seas. It was the Anglo-Saxon race, more than the 
snows of Russia, that vanquished Napoleon, prevented the 
triumph of personal imperialism, and stood guard at St. 
Helena over the military genius of all ages. It is the 
Anglo-Saxon race that is "the pioneer of progress and 
the stubborn defenders of liberty" ; it is the Anglo-Saxon 
race that gave to mankind civil liberty, whereby authority 
and law are harnessed together to the chariot of modern civ- 
ilization ; and it is this Anglo-Saxon race from which we are 
sprung. In our religious proclivities, in our system of laws, 
and in our literature we are as Anglo-Saxon as the British. 
''We, too, are heirs of Runnymede, and Shakespeare's fame 
and Cromwell's deed are not alone our mother's." We are 
Anglo-Saxon in the men who today are the controlling ele- 
ment in our population, who lead and represent us, and we 
propose in the near future that the nations of the earth shall 
respect our guns and gunners as much as they do those of 
our English cousins, and that we as well as England shall 
henceforth be recognized as much for our strength as for 
our trade. 

In the keen competition of the immediate future for the 
vast trade of the Orient, where the flower of civilization is 
just budding, we must be in a position to demand and 
exact our share, or we will lose it. We must match Port 
Arthur, Wei-a-Wei, and Keao Chou with Manila. 

When the Panama Canal is completed, as in the near 
future it must be, at either end our sentinels must stand 
guard, and our flag must have a resting place on some of 



THE WAR WITH SPAIN 197 

the islands that command the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of 
Mexico, and Atlantic Ocean. 

Behind courage there must be strength. Behind great 
national interests there must be immediate and sufficient 
protection known of all men. We have courage, but behind 
it little strength immediately available. We have great 
national interests, but it is now known of all men that the 
protection behind them is possible, but remote. Neither in 
the Atlantic, Pacific, nor in the Orient have we a spot 
where an American ship can coal as of right. If we would 
be as independent as we can be powerful, all this should 
be changed. 

The God of Battles has planted our flag upon islands 
in the distant Pacific. He will soon unfurl it upon islands 
in the Atlantic. A friendly people may soon unfold it 
where the waters break on Honolulu's coral reefs. From 
now on, wherever it is raised, except in Cuba, it is raised to 
stay, and there it will remain as long as American courage 
backs up American genius upon the decks of an American 
man-of-war. 

"Earth bears no balsam for mistakes." "Whoever chooses 
must choose aright." God grant that the American people 
have chosen aright, that they have made no mistake in 
fighting this battle for humanity, and that its effect upon 
our future may redound to the glory of our country, and 
to the dissemination and perpetuation of popular govern- 
ment throughout the world. 



CHARACTER 



(Delivered at the University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada, 
September ii, 1908.) 



YOUNG Ladies and Gentlemen, Students of the 
University of Nevada : I hope that the young ladies 
will not feel that, in the remarks I shall present to you, 
I am overlooking them. Apparently I shall be addressing 
only the young men, because I shall confine myself, for 
brevity, to the use of the personal pronoun "he," instead 
of using the phrase "he or she." Though my experience 
has been nothing to speak of, and my information only 
hearsay, yet I am convinced that "he" always embraces 
"she." Therefore, for all of you is my speech intended. 

Just a little over ten years ago I had the pleasure of 
addressing the students of this university. It was at the 
commencement exercises in June, 1898. A most memorable 
incident marked the occasion. The war with Spain had just 
begun, a wave of patriotism was sweeping over the country, 
and flag-raising was the order of the day. A new flag was 
to be raised on your campus. The judge of this district 
delivered a very eloquent address. The flag was made fast 
to the halyards and hoisted. There was a dead calm, and 
the flag, as it slowly ascended, clung listlessly to the pole, as 
if it felt no concern in what was taking place. The crowd 
looked on in silence. Instantly, however, when it had 
reached the top of the pole, and the cannon began to boom 
and the band to play in its honor, it seemed to awake to its 
position, its might, majesty, and dominion. I imagine that 



CHARACTER 199 

it called upon the winds for their obeisance, for imme- 
diately out of the heavens they came, and, borne upon 
their noiseless wings, it was unfurled in all its starry splen- 
dor of red, white, and blue. It was the most inspiring 
sight our eyes had ever seen, and from every throat cheers 
rang out in patriotic applause. Then it was that a lady 
standing at my side exclaimed, "God knows when the 
wind should blow." 

While this was occurring the Oregon was flying this 
flag on its famous voyage around Cape Horn that ended 
in victory over the Spanish armada at Santiago. Recently 
sixteen battleships, each one vastly superior to the Oregon, 
have borne it on a voyage of peace from the Atlantic to 
the Pacific, and are now carrying it around the world, 
receiving for it the admiration and hospitable greeting of 
applauding nations. 

Since June, 1898, one more star has appeared upon its 
firmament of blue, upon this flag of ours we so proudly 
proclaim the Star-Spangled Banner. 

Love and respect that flag! Let your manhood and 
womanhood be worthy of its protecting folds ! 

It may be admitted as a truism that scholarship is not 
an end, but only a means to an end, and that that end is 
correct living; that a college education that simply stores 
the mind with knowledge has failed in its purpose; and 
that knowledge is valuable only when it is the handmaiden 
to character. I speak of character apart from success, as 
something more valuable than success. It is that quality 
that enables a man to stand the test of a great emergency, 
as did many of the buildings in San Francisco during the 
earthquake of April, 1906, while others, grander, taller, 
and more conspicuous in the world's eye, crumbled and 
fell. It is that quality without which a man can not 
acquire the entire confidence of any one. It is made up 



200 CHARACTER 

of humility, self-understanding, strength, courage, honor, 
and devotion to duty. 

Without it genius is a will-o'-the-wisp leading to disas- 
ter. With it genius is a pillar of cloud by day and a 
pillar of fire by night, a sure guide to safety and success. 

The main purpose, therefore, of each one of you is to 
develop character, and in this you will have succeeded if 
in after life it can be said of you, as has been said of 
Grover Cleveland: 

"He stood like a soldier at his post, with no 
thought but the performance of his duty, and 
with very little hope of reward except that which 
came from his own conscience." 

Grover Cleveland is one of the world's admitted heroes, 
and this because he labored with no thought but the per- 
formance of his duty. It is this spirit that fills the world 
with numberless heroes, recognized and unrecognized. 

Recently in New York, in a baseball game between two 
of the leading clubs, the pitcher of one of the clubs pitched 
a remarkable game and won a victory for his club, while 
his baby at home was dying. Never before had he dem- 
onstrated such ability. He was absolute master of the ball. 
It obeyed his wish to the slightest curve. It magically 
approached the plate, moving upward or downward at his 
bidding, completely baffling the greatest batters in the 
opposing club. They could not unravel his curves, and his 
club won a great victory. Then, while thousands of people 
were wildly cheering his great pitching, he went to his 
dressing-room, collapsed, and wept like a baby, and rushed 
to the railroad station to board a train for the bedside of 
his dying child in Pennsylvania. 

He was simply a baseball player, his name unknown to 
fame, and yet, had he been a slayer of thousands in the 



CHARACTER 201 

game of war, where powder backs the balls, and victory 
by its cruelty humanity appalls, no greater hero would he 
be. He had done his duty for duty's sake, and sacrificed 
himself, and this is heroism equally on the ballfield as on 
the battlefield. 

Dickens somewhere speaks of a quiet nook in a country 
churchyard, where the daisies bloom on the bosoms of the 
dead. I know of a quiet nook in a country graveyard 
where pine-burrs cover the bosoms of the dead, and pine 
trees point in solemn mien the pathway of the soul from 
the sod to the sun. Some years ago, while aimlessly wan- 
dering through this city of the dead, then long abandoned, 
I noticed a tombstone bearing the following inscription : 
"Brave, gifted, generous, and faithful, he 
closed a Hfe of usefulness and purity by a 
death of honor," 

Impressed with the beauty of such an epitaph, I sought 
the name of the hero so obscurely buried. On the oppo- 
site side of the shaft I noted the following words: 
"No, leave me here, I might put you in peril." 

These were his last words, when, wounded, he was 
offered assistance from the field. Upon the third side was 
written the following : 

"Henry Meredith, 

Born 

in Hanover County, 

State of Virginia, 

on the 14th day of August, 

A. D. 1826, 

Died 

in battle, at Pyramid Lake, 

in Utah Territory, 

on the 13th day of May, 

A. D. 1860." 

Inquiring in Nevada City, where this cemetery is situ- 
ated, I learned that Meredith, while leading a company of 



202 CHARACTER 

volunteers against the Indians near Pyramid Lake in Utah, 
in 1860, had been ambushed and wounded. The quota- 
tion upon his tomb was the expression of his unselfish soul. 
He knew that they could not save him, but would risk 
their lives by remaining with him. He stood like a soldier 
at his post, with no thought but the performance of his 
duty and the safety of his comrades by the sacrifice of 
himself. He was in every sense a hero, though today quite 
unheralded. 

This humble monument and this almost forgotten grave 
teach us one of life's bitterest and yet one of its best 
lessons. 

To be buried in some pantheon erected by a nation to 
its illustrious dead, to be enrolled in some temple of fame 
as one of those who were not born to die, to have one's 
name carved high up, above the fog and smoke and dust 
of daily life, where the sunlight of glory forever illumines ; 
to be sung of in song, and read of in story — these are 
thought to be life's greatest inspirations to successful 
endeavor. Such a reward is considered the bag of gold 
at the end of the rainbow-path of promise. 

To die upon the firing line, facing the foe and holding 
on to the flag, and yet to have one's name omitted from 
the rostra; to risk one's life or give it in the performance 
of duty; to live a life of usefulness and purity and die 
a death of honor, and yet be buried in a quiet nook in an 
obscure country graveyard, far from the madding crowd, 
where one is soon forgot, would seem to be but a poor 
reward for heroic living or heroic dying, and might well 
justify the exclamation: 

"111 hath it ended that was well begun, 
Into the shadow and out of the sun." 

And yet, to come to such a desperate conclusion would be 



CHARACTER 203 

to read wrong the lesson of life, to misinterpret its true 
inspiration. 

The grandest pantheon, the sublimest temple of fame, is 
not one built by human hands. It has one great architect, 
but builders as countless as the sands of the sea or the 
dew-drops of the dawn. It is constructed of sacrifice as 
well as of success; of brave failures as well as of success- 
ful endeavors; of battles nobly fought, though not always 
won; of good deeds and kind intentions; of pure lives 
and honest ones; of faith maintained and confidence 
unabused; of honor unstained, and of charity that vaunteth 
not itself. Its corner-stone is the Rock of Ages. Fire 
can not consume it, nor earthquakes overthrow it. It has 
tablets for all the world's heroes, for the many that lie 
obscurely buried and are by men forgot, no less than for 
those whom a Westminster entombs and whom none forget. 
No one worthy to be enrolled therein has lived in vain. 

If we read life's lesson aright, we learn that man's 
noblest incentive is not other men's praise or the world's 
applause, but his own approval, and that that can come only 
from the consciousness of duty done for duty's sake. The 
task performed, its own reward must bring. 

Nearly two hundred and fifty years ago Lord Mansfield 
gave most eloquent utterance to this idea. John Wilkes 
had been outlawed and banished, and had returned and 
applied for a reversal of the judgment of outlawry. The 
matter came on before Lord Mansfield sitting in the Court 
of Kings Bench. The king bitterly opposed the reversal, 
and the court room was filled with Wilkes' enemies, who 
even threatened the life of the Chief Justice. But the 
latter, facing this angry mob, and indifferent to a monarch's 
frown, granted Wilkes's petition, and then addressed the 
mob in these words: "I wish popularity, but it is that 
popularity which follows, not that which is run after. It 



204 CHARACTER 

is that popularity which sooner or later never fails to do 
justice to the pursuit of noble ends by noble means. I 
will not do that which my conscience tells me is wrong 
upon this occasion to gain the huzzas of thousands or the 
daily praise of all the papers which come from the press." 

Strive not, then, primarily for applause, but for the 
accomplishment of the undertaking before you; live only 
for results by labor accomplished and with honor achieved; 
let the permanence of your work be more precious to you 
than your glory as a worker; subordinate self to attain- 
ment; fix your gaze upon your task and not upon your 
mirror; fight for a cause, and not merely for victory, and 
not only will the world be the better for your living, but 
you will hear the angels sing : "Well done, good and faith- 
ful servant, enter into the joy of thy king." 

It has been said that, if there is one place above another 
where a man should be sure of acquiring habits of the 
strictest honesty, it is a college. "The valuable thing 
which a university should give a student is the ideal of 
truth as the supreme object of human endeavor." Pos- 
sessed of such an ideal, he can not fail in duty. 

Recently two members of the squad of Harvard oars- 
men, including one of the 'varsity eight, were suspended 
from the university and could not row. The news was 
received with something like consternation by those who 
were eager for a Harvard victory, and multitudinous were 
the requests for leniency. Even President Roosevelt peti- 
tioned for their reinstatement. The grand old president of 
Harvard, however, uninfluenced by power or place, loving 
honor more than a college victory, did not know what 
pressure was nor compromise with wrong, and replied to 
the President of the United States in these memorable 
words: "Each man did a dishonorable thing. A keen and 
sure sense of honor being the finest result of college life, 



CHARACTER 205 

I think the college and graduates should condemn effect- 
ively dishonorable conduct." 

At the University of Virginia the students have acquired 
habits of such strict honesty that cheating at examination 
is considered an act that no gentleman would commit, and 
they themselves compel a fellow-student who cheats to 
leave college. In the language of President Elliott, they 
thus very effectively condemn dishonorable conduct. 

I hope that you emulate in this the University of Virginia 
and have adopted as your rule of conduct, "No gentleman 
will cheat at examinations." 

It matters not whether you cheat in your examinations 
at college, or in your business in after life. In either case 
you attempt to obtain under false pretenses that to which 
you are not entitled, in either case you do a dishonorable 
act, in either case you cease to be a gentleman. 

Bear in mind that it is the first falsehood that is the 
push that starts you downhill. It is so hard to stop the 
descent and climb back. Facilis descensus, difficilis ascensus. 
It is so hard after the first falsehood to hold up your 
head and look yourself in the face. 

As you can never fearlessly meet the gaze of the man 
who knows you have cheated, so you can never hold up the 
mirror and fearlessly meet your own gaze when once you 
have cheated. Be honest in your examinations, and you 
will be a student unafraid of any one. 

The student who cheats cheapens the diploma of his 
alma mater. A diploma, when honestly obtained, is a 
certificate of merit, but when dishonestly obtained it is a 
badge of shame. 

As a notable example of those who had a keen and 
sure sense of honor, I need only mention the name of 
John W. Mackay, whose statue adorns and honors this 
university, and of whom an orator said, at the recent unveil- 



206 CHARACTER 

ing of this statue: "He never lied or cheated, or under 
any subtle pretense of any kind deprived another of what 
was rightfully his." 

Mr. Mackay's life is a striking instance of that life 
about which I have spoken and that I would have you lead. 
He never sought the limelight of public approbation. He 
seemed to care little for the world's applause. He rose 
from poverty to plenty by doing his duty in that state 
of life in which it pleased God to put him. He was able, 
industrious, honest, and kind. 

I remember an instance concerning him in connection 
with the death of that well-known Bohemian and poet, 
Daniel O'Connell. On the day of the announcement in 
the press of O'Connell's death, I received a message from 
Mr. Mackay requesting me to come to his office in the 
Nevada Block in San Francisco. Upon arriving there he 
handed me a check drawn to my order for one thousand 
dollars, and directed me to cash it and send the money to 
O'Connell's widow, at the same time strictly enjoining me 
from letting her know the name of the donor. He had 
known and helped O'Connell in the old bonanza days in 
Virginia City; he knew that he never had much money; 
he supposed that his family were left destitute, and he 
wanted to help the poor and needy without any desire for 
gratitude or to establish a reputation for philanthropy, but 
merely because he wanted to be kind. 

As a notable example of those who had a keen and 
sure sense of duty I mention again the name of Grover 
Cleveland. He had the instinct of duty regardless of glory, 
and in this respect was like the sailors in Nelson's fleet who, 
when the Admiral's famous message, "England expects every 
man to do his duty," was delivered to them, muttered "Duty ! 
We've always done it. Why not?" 



CHARACTER 207 

Just before the expiration of Cleveland's last term of 
office he said to a friend, who wished to publish a defense 
of his administration: "In a few hours I shall cease to be 
President. The people seem to have deserted me, and I 
would advise you to withhold this publication. Since I 
have done my duty as I saw it, I feel that I need no 
defense." 

At another time a prominent Democrat said to him: "If 
you attempt to stand above your party you will find your- 
self in the cold before you are through with it" ; to which 
he replied: "Yes, people who occupy high altitudes are 
often in the cold. As for me, I shall do right as God 
gives me to see the right, and let the consequences rest 
with Him." He did not accept Meredith's aphorism: 
''Expediency is man's wisdom. Doing right is God's." On 
the contrary, he believed that doing right was man's wis- 
dom as well as God's. 

A eulogist has truthfully written of him: "The honors 
and trappings of office were nothing to him, the obliga- 
tions and duties of office were everything to him. He 
accepted an issue as it was presented to him, and chose his 
part without considering his own fortunes." His election 
was the triumph of character, his fame its eulogy. 

America has produced many men gifted with genius and 
with a sure and keen sense of honor, and inspired by zeal 
for the performance of duty, but undazzled by the pros- 
pect of personal power. The greatest of these was Wash- 
ington. Never a seeker for place, he never hesitated to 
obey his country's call, and ever served her with a patience, 
patriotism, and prowess that neither adversity nor calumny 
discouraged, nor did lust for power ever divert him from 
the singleness of his purpose, the performance of his duty, 
or his noble self-neglect. 



208 CHARACTER 

Alexander Hamilton's genius for statescraft made him the 
interpreter of the Federal idea that was the corner-stone 
of the Union, but it was Washington's character that upheld 
Hamilton at every crisis of the struggle and without which 
Hamilton could not have welded the victorious colonies into 
a more perfect union. 

There may have been statesmen more profound and gen- 
erals more brilliant in achievement than Washington, but 
no one of a loftier character, and therefore a recent English 
historian has written of him that he was a man whom it 
lias never been possible to praise beyond its merits. 

Lincoln was most like Washington in unselfish devotion 
to duty, never swerving from the path that conscience 
prompted and humanity dictated, unruffled by calumny, 
undismayed by defeat, untempted by ambition, unspoiled 
by the possession of imperial power. 

This was his golden rule of life: 'T am not bound to 
win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to suc- 
ceed, but I am bound to live up to the light I have." Mem- 
orize this rule thus worded: 'T am not bound to win, but 
I am bound to be true. Knowing the right, I must not the 
wrong pursue." 

Chief Justice Marshall was America's greatest jurist, 
great not only as the expounder of the constitution, but 
as its most fearless judge. To him more than to any other 
do we owe our present form of government. When Aaron 
Burr was on trial before him for treason, his hands red 
with the blood of Alexander Hamilton, whom Marshall 
loved, the people throughout the country demanding his 
conviction, and the President of the United States using 
all the influence of his high office to bring about the 
same result, the Chief Justice charged the jury to acquit, 
and thus referred to all this outside pressure: "That this 
court dares not usurp power is most. true. That this court 



CHARACTER 209 

dares not shrink from its duty is not less true. No man 
is desirous of becoming the peculiar subject of calumny. 
No man, might he let the bitter cup pass from him without 
self-reproach, would drain it to the bottom. But if he 
has no choice in the case, if there is no alternative pre- 
sented to him but a dereliction of duty or the opprobrium 
of those who are denominated the world, he merits the 
contempt as well as the indignation of his country who 
can hesitate which to embrace." 

Grant, Lee, and Stonewall Jackson are three other Amer- 
ican heroes whose memory is "hallowed in the minds of 
their countrymen not so much by their victories as by their 
unfailing honesty and steadfast regard for duty," the last 
mentioned of whom, Stonewall Jackson, said, "What is 
life without honor? Degradation is worse than death." 
Well might he have added, "There is no curse so terrible 
as that which lights a bosom fire for him who gives away 
his honor." 

Grant, Lee, and Jackson illustrate well the point of my 
story. The first was a conqueror, the others followed a 
conquered banner. Yet the world still debates their respect- 
ive merits and leaves undecided the question of supremacy. 
Monumental brass and scriptured marble alike attest the 
greatness of each. In North and South is glowing tribute 
paid to victor and to vanquished, and their fame is the 
common heritage of us all. This is because each in char- 
acter stood high, and, surpassed by none, was the other's 
peer. 

These men all had high ideals and lived up to them. 
They hitched their chariots to the stars and drove by the 
light of their stellar steeds. 

Students of this university, these college years are but 
the practice-innings for the real game of life that is to 
be played, but the initial training for the battle of life 



210 CHARACTER 

that is to be fought, but the first steps in the journey 
toward the goal of fulfilment. Make no mistakes ! "Earth 
bears no balsam for mistakes." Let the men I have men- 
tioned be your guides. Have high ideals. "Strike upwards, 
even if you strike at the stars." Any one of you may 
become a captain- general of industry, controlling the des- 
tinies of many men and the investment of many millions, 
or a captain-general of war and have your bones entombed 
where rolls the Hudson, or a captain-general of the sea 
and sail a mighty fleet of battleships from West to Eastern 
Ind, with all the nations wondering. Any one of you may 
become one of the world's greatest orators and by the sole 
magic of your eloquence nominate yourself for the presi- 
dency, or one of its greatest poets and, like Byron, touch 
your harp while nations stand entranced, or one of its 
greatest dramatists and, like Shakespeare, make the world 
your stage and all humanity your theme, or one of its 
greatest jurists and, like John Marshall, make your fame 
a beacon light in the domain of the law, or one of its 
greatest statesmen and, like Alexander Hamilton, make the 
strength of your government a monument to your partici- 
pation therein. Any one of you may become one of the 
world's greatest engineers and harness the mountain torrents 
to drive the wheels of industry, or conserve the waste waters 
to make the wilderness blossom as the rose. Any one of you 
may become a great astronomer and wrest their secrets from 
the stars. Any one of you may be the man who sets the 
mark for which his fellow-men shall strive. But, if you 
do not attain to any of these high pinnacles, you can by 
high character, correct living, and unflagging devotion to 
duty contribute to man's uplifting. 

No one of you may become, like Napoleon, a human 
meteor dashing across the skies, blinding by its glare and 
destroying by its heat, but every one of you may become, 



CHARACTER 211 

as it were, a ray of the sun, helping to bring light where 
there was darkness, warmth where there was cold, life 
where there was seeming death, and all together consti- 
tuting the sun, whence all blessings flow. 

Bear in mind that no general ever alone won a battle. 
It is to the common soldier who holds the bridge that 
the victory is often due. It is the private soldiers who 
form the firing line. It is the man behind the gun who is 
the bulwark of the flag. In the history of Rome it took 
twenty centuries to corrupt the man behind the spear. 

I would not advise you, as Cardinal Wolsely advised 
Cromwell, to fling away ambition, because that was the 
advice of one who, though he "had trod the ways of glory," 
yet "had ventured, like little wanton boys that swim on 
bladders, far beyond his depth," and had robbed his land 
to enrich himself, and who fell because of his own base- 
ness. I would, on the contrary, stimulate in you ambition, 
not that by which the angels fell, but that which makes 
gods of men. 

To fling away ambition because, when centered all on 
self, like Sampson, it pulls down upon your head the tem- 
ple it forced you to build, would be like abandoning steam 
because when ill applied it destroys him who would con- 
trol it. 

Be ambitious "to do justice for truth's sake and your 
conscience, to be just and fear not, to love yourself last !" 

Be ambitious to thine own self to be true, to build up 
character so that when the supreme moment comes you 
will be available. Supreme moments are the exclusive 
opportunities of men of character. 

Therefore I say unto you, though you remain all your life 
a private in the ranks, be until death the captain of your 
soul ! Keep the faith, be true ! Act well your part, there 
all the honor lies ! Be good because you abhor the bad, pure 



212 CHARACTER 

because you shrink from impurity ! Show kindness because 
unkindness is repellant to you ! Help the helpless because 
such is the duty of the strong ! Lead the blind because 
such is the mission of those who can see ! Be industrious 
because idleness degrades ! Live clean lives for cleanli- 
ness's sake ! Tell the truth for truth's sake ! Love honor 
for honor's sake ! Work for work's sake, and "work while 
it is day, for the night cometh when no man can work." 
Do your duty for duty's sake, and remember that, though 
a man without a sense of duty may possibly be brave, no 
man controlled by a sense of duty can be a coward ! 
Remember that by each arm, however weak, there is a 
bow to be bent and an arrow to be shot ! Train your arm 
and eye that you may shoot true, thinking only of the 
target ! Remember that every one has his work to do ! 
Apply your every energy to the task in hand, thinking only 
of its accomplishment ! Remember that the work is greater 
than the worker ! Follow your calling with humility as you 
w^orship at your altar with reverence ! Remember that to 
every one some opportunity comes ! Be equal to your 
opportunity, for therein greatness lies. Remember that to 
every one life is w^orth living, if he but live it worthily, 
and he must live it worthily if he lives it to his own 
approval. This he will have done if, upon the tombstone 
over his grave, even though it be in a quiet nook in a 
country graveyard, where pine-burrs cover the bosom of 
the dead, this epitaph be carved : 

"He fought a good fight, he never lied 
or cheated, he closed a life of usefulness 
and purity by a death of honor." 

Let me commend to you the advice given by the great 
Pasteur, towards the end of his illustrious career, to his 
pupils: "Whether your efforts are favored by life or not. 



CHARACTER 213 

be able to say when you are near the great goal : 'I have 
done what I could.' " 

"Who is the happy warrior? Who is he 
That every man in arms should wish to be? 
It is the generous spirit who, when brought 
Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought 
Upon the plan that pleased his childish thought; 
Whose high endeavors are an inward light. 
That makes the path before him always bright ; 

****** H< * :|-- 

"Who, if he rise to station of command, 

Rises by open means, and there will stand 

On honorable terms, or else retire ; 

********* 
" 'Tis the man who, lifted high, 

Conspicuous object in a nation's eye. 

Or left unthought of, in obscurity — 

Who, with a toward or untoward lot. 

Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not — 

Plays, in the many games of life, that one 

Where what he most doth value must be won ; 

********* 

Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth 

Forever, and to noble deeds give birth. 

Or he must go to dust without his fame. 

And leave a dead, unprofitable name — 

Finds comfort in himself and in his cause ; 

And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws 

His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause — 

This is the happy warrior ; this is he 

Whom every man in arms should wish to be." 



FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 



(Delivered at Sacramento, July 4, 1900.) 



LADIES AND Gentlemen: Abraham Lincoln said: 
"We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves 
of all the good done in the progress of time, of how it was 
done, and who did it, and how we are historically connected 
with it; and we go from these meetings in better humor 
with ourselves; we feel more attached, the one and the 
other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. 
In every way we are better men in the age and race and 
country in which we live, for these celebrations." 

Every year, on the Fourth of July, the people of the 
United States of America take stock of themselves. 

On this annual occasion they look about themselves, and 
take stock of the rest of the world. 

On this day, as each year rolls round, they make good 
resolutions for the future, and reread the Declaration of 
Independence, a document which Jefferson penned in a few 
moments, but which the civilized world was more than 
eighteen centuries in producing. 

Therefore, today in the closing year of the nineteenth 
century, we again take stock of ourselves and our neigh- 
bors, again read the Declaration of Independence, and, in 
the sight of God and man, again resolve to preserve untar- 
nished our heritage of freedom, to ever maintain this a 
government of the people, by the people, and for the people, 
and, keeping in mind the glorious traditions of the closing 
century, to so live that our descendants may find in our 



FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 215 

lives traditions just as glorious, to so live that when the 
twentieth century, just dawning, has itself become history, 
our wisdom, our loyalty, and our patriotism shall be revered 
as we revere the wisdom, loyalty, and patriotism of those 
who more than one hundred years ago made good the 
Declaration of Independence. 

Within the past year the Czar of Russia invited all the 
nations to confer together in order that there might be 
henceforth and forever peace on earth, good will among 
men, in order that the nations might dwell together in 
brotherly love, the sword be turned into the plowshare 
and the pruning hook, and war's dread alarms no longer 
interrupt the harmonies of peace. And yet, ere time could 
dry the ink in which were writ the proceedings of this 
conference. Englishmen and Boers in South Africa were 
crimsoning many a battlefield with their blood, and Eng- 
land's victories were establishing her suzerainty from Cairo 
to Capetown ; American soldiers in the islands of the 
Orient were planting the seeds of American civilization 
and watering them with their blood; and in China the 
first guns were fired in the death struggle that is inevitable 
between the decadent and destructive civilization of the 
Orient and the progressive and regenerating civilization of 
the Occident. Towards the Celestial Empire, whose four 
hundred millions are just waking from their sleep of cen- 
turies, point now the prows of the battleships of the nations, 
and it is a consummation devoutly wished for although 
almost past being hoped for that they fight not one with 
another. 

Everywhere armies are growing, and increasing navies 
fret every sea with their rapidly multiplying leviathans of 
war. 

Everywhere the nations are fortifying their shores, sharp- 
ening their swords, and filling their arsenals with shot and 



216 FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 

shell and powder as powerful as man's explosive genius 
can concoct. 

"At every bastioned frontier, every state, Suspicion, 
sworded, standing by the gate." 

What is the cause of all these warlike preparations? 

Why in the. midst of peace do the nations prepare for war? 

The answer is that the nations of Europe must expand 
into Asia and Africa, or some must perish. The struggle 
is for supremacy of trade, for new markets and new fields 
of industry, and in this struggle every nation wdll take that 
has the power and every one will hold that can. 

England in Egypt is not merely the conqueror of the 
Mahdi. Her victories under Kitchener would be needless 
butcheries were they not the means whereby English cap- 
ital and English enterprise may find fruitful opportunity 
in increasing the fertility, the industries, the trade, and the 
prosperity of the land of the Nile. 

England in South Africa would be waging a war entirely 
one of conquest were it not that her success is intended 
to and w^ill produce greater opportunities for the crowded 
industries of Europe. 

Russia, Germany, Italy, France, England, and Japan 
long since practically invaded China and seized each one 
a landing place upon her soil, not for conquest, but as a 
post of vantage whence each may strive to secure its share 
of the fabulous trade the future will build up in the 
Orient. 

The increasing sharpness of the competition among the 
nations for existence, for trade extension, for trade suprem- 
acy, and especially for the trade of China's millions, is 
the underlying cause for the armament of the nations. 

Among these competing nations the one that is causing 
the greatest anxiety to its fellows, the one that is forging 
ahead of the others, the one most courted and most feared, 



FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 217 

the one predestined to be the banker of the world and the 
arbiter of its destinies, is the United States of America. 

We are building locomotives for railroads in Europe, 
Asia, and Africa, we are building bridges to span the Nile 
and mining machinery for the Transvaal, we are selling 
ironware in Birmingham, carpets in Kidderminster, watch 
cases in Geneva, and bicycles for every road in Europe. 

In this keen rivalry among the nations for mastery in 
commerce we are bringing sweat to the brows of them all, 
we and they alike recognizing that the doctrine of evolu- 
tion and of the survival of the fittest applies equally to 
nations and to individuals. We believe that we will prove 
to be the fittest. 

The sharp competition which we are forcing upon Euro- 
pean nations has already been made the subject of official 
investigation, both in England and Germany, and their 
trade reports do not hesitate to state that it is no longer 
the competition of the "United States against the indi- 
vidual nations, but of the combined European countries 
against the United States." 

In 1830 the United States had only 5.4 per cent of the 
world's commerce. By 1897 this percentage has increased 
to 9.7, while in the meantime the percentages of Great 
Britain, France, Germany, and Russia, respectively, have 
decreased. 

The value of the annual product of the manufacturing 
industries of Great Britain is only 44 per cent, of Germany 
only 35 per cent, and of France only 30 per cent of that 
of the United States. 

We can supply our domestic market by running our fac- 
tories only eight months of the year, and, therefore, we 
must sell abroad one-third of our products. 

During the fiscal year ending in June, 1899, our for- 
eign products for the first time crossed the $2,000,000,000 



218 FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 

mark, and our exports exceeded our imports by over 
$500,000,000. 

Our people are prosperous, and there is work for all that 
seek employment. Our farmers are paying their mortgages, 
and capital finds ready investment. Our flag is respected 
at home and abroad. And yet, at this moment of pros- 
perity, we stand at the parting of the ways. We have 
arrived at man's estate. What shall our manhood be? 
Shall we choose the road that leads to the uplands, that 
will utilize our manhood and make it great and glorious ; 
or shall we select that path whose down grade needs 
neither struggle nor courage to travel and whose terminal 
is the low land of sloth and decay? Upon our choice 
depends the history of the next century. 

During the spring of the year 1898 we went to war with 
Spain, and from counting room and college hall and schol- 
ar's desk and workman's bench our citizens rushed to enlist 
beneath the Stars and Stripes to fight a foreign foe upon 
foreign soil. 

For the first time the army and navy of the United 
States left this continent to invade a foreign land. 

We took upon our shoulders the burden of battle, we 
assimied the cost of carnage, we were prepared to wear 
crape for our kindred killed, because we had determined 
to wage war for humanity's sake alone, because in the 
name of humanity, in the name of civilization, we had 
ordered Spain to leave Cuba. 

We entered into a war out of which we expected that 
there would come to us only the suffering of those who 
fall in battle, and the grief of loved ones at home, only 
sacrifices and burdens, and the satisfaction of having ended 
misery and misrule in a neighboring land, and of duty 
done and protection to the weak maintained. We fought 
to carry out the principle upon which this government was 



FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 219 

founded, namely, the uplifting of the weak, and the resist- 
ing of the strong. Never before since the crusades has a 
nation embarked on such an unselfish adventure. 

Destiny works in a mysterious way its wonders to per- 
form, and rarely reveals in advance what is forging in the 
workshop of fate. Behind the curtain of the future tomor- 
row waits, holding in its hands the unexpected and the 
inevitable towards which the unerring and irresistible mag- 
net of fate hurries the nations. 

Yesterday we were hedged in by a Chinese wall of 
American isolation. Deaf, blind, and heedless of the world 
without, we neither accepted the responsibilities of our true 
place among the nations nor secured its advantages. Yes- 
terday's tomorrow finds that wall razed by the magic batter- 
ing ram of destiny, and o'er its ruins marched the Cuban, 
Porto Rican, and Philippine expeditions. 

Two years ago, on the first of May, Dewey's destruc- 
tion of the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay made us an Oriental 
power. Two years ago on the fourth day of July Samp- 
son's and Schley's destruction of the Spanish fleet at San- 
tiago made the Antilles a part of the American continent. 

When the war ended our flag floated over Porto Rico 
and the Philippines Islands as American territory, and over 
Cuba in trust for freedom and good government. 

Shall our flag remain where fate and valor planted it, 
shall we retain these islands, shall we give them up, what 
are our duties to the peoples of these islands and to our- 
selves, are the great questions that today much and most 
concern this country and upon which our statesmen are 
divided irrespective of party. They are questions most 
opportune upon this particular occasion, and I shall discuss 
them briefly from what I consider the true American 
standpoint. 



220 FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 

On the Fourth of July, if upon no other occasion, an 
American should be an optimist. Upon this Fourth of 
July in particular an American should find a silver lining 
to every cloud. 

Upon this Fourth of July I am an optimist, and my 
imagination, born in sound reason and inspired by hope, 
carries me forv^ard along the rainbow path of promise to 
a glorious future for my country. 

We are told that we should haul down our flag from 
Morro Castle and leave Cuba, and that in staying there 
we are breaking faith with the people of this island. I 
do not believe that the American people ever will break 
faith with any one. We gave our bond and sealed it with 
our blood that when we had driven Spain from Cuba we 
would establish there a stable government, and that then 
Cuba should be free and independent to follow her own 
destiny. This promise we made while all the listening 
nations marveled, and this promise we are trying to fulfill. 
Whatever may be the future of this queen of the Antilles, 
whether she attempts to go it alone, as an island republic 
or, like Hawaii, seek the protection of the American flag, 
we all know that her choice will be freely made, and that 
this choice will be made by a Cuba ruled by law, disci- 
plined by order, and blessed with the plentitude of peace. 

As a result of this war we find ourselves with colonial 
possessions beyond the seas, and in such a position that 
we are forced to be on the commission in whose keeping 
is the peace of the world. A recognition of these facts 
and the adoption of a policy demanded by the logic of events 
is called "imperialism," and we are told that it means an 
abandonment of the Monroe Doctrine and of the policy 
of the Father of His Country. Washington's farewell 
address and Monroe's message are held up to us as the 
sheet anchors of our ship of state, the infallible guides 



FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 221 

fate has given us to follow for all time, the breaking away 
from which will certainly bring national destruction. 

At the beginning of our history our national existence 
depended upon our national isolation. It was then the 
custom for the great powers to trade small possessions as 
if they were jack-knives. In this way the Dutch colony 
of New York was acquired by England, and in this way 
the latter country traded Havana for the Floridas. The 
Europe that Richelieu had distributed so as to balance 
the nations Napoleon redistributed, drawing national bound- 
aries along the compass lines of his own ambition. After 
Napoleon the Holy Alliance grasped the dice-box of the 
kingdoms, and began to throw new combinations upon the 
green table of the nations. Its openly avowed aim was to 
suppress freedom, rivet anew the people's chains, and 
reburnish crowns whose luster had grown dim, and this 
policy was about to be applied to the restoration of Spain's 
dominion over her revolted colonies on this continent. Then 
it was that Monroe supplemented Washington's farewell 
address with his celebrated message. 

Washington feared that the powers of Europe would be 
continually maneuvering to work us into their real or imag- 
inary balances of power, to make us a make-weight candle 
in weighing out their pounds. Monroe feared that our 
national independence would be endangered by allowing 
the Holy Alliance to bring any part of this continent under 
its baneful influence, and make liberty here subservient to 
the greed and ambition of kings. Therefore, the farewell 
address and the message crystallized as the foreign policy 
of this country the determination not to entangle ourselves 
in the broils of Europe, not to allow the European powers 
to meddle in American affairs, not to permit these powers 
to transfer their American possessions from one to another, 
and to withdraw this continent from European colonization. 



222 FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 

"The address," said Jefferson, "made us a nation; the mes- 
sage set the compass and pointed the course which we were 
to steer through the ocean of time opening to us." 

We still adhere to the Monroe Doctrine, and still assert 
that "the American continents, by the free and independent 
condition which they have assumed and maintain, are hence- 
forth not to be considered as subjects for foreign coloniza- 
tion by any European powers," and that "we should con- 
sider any attempt on their part to extend their system to 
any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace 
and safety." We still stand ready to prevent any Euro- 
pean power from doing what France attempted in Mexico 
or England in Venezuela. 

The Monroe Doctrine was never more alive than it is 
today, and when our delegates to the Peace Congress at 
The Hague signed the arbitration agreement there they 
annexed as a condition to their assent the provision that 
the European governments could not intervene in Amer- 
ican affairs. 

If, however, it still be maintained that the present policy 
is a departure from the policy of Washington and Monroe, 
then so let it be. Our hand is to the plow ; we must fol- 
low the furrow to the end. The wind is off shore, and 
we must take advantage of the breeze, steering our course 
by the star of our destiny. No longer shall dead hands 
extend their fleshless fingers from century-old graves like 
skeleton guides to point the living present to any inexorable 
course. 

We are told again that the new imperialism leads to 
the acquisition of territory away from this continent, to 
the annexation of tropical islands that we can not govern 
as colonies, nor admit into the union as States, nor endow 
w^ith universal suffrage, nor populate with our people, but 
which we must nevertheless defend with our army and 



FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 223 

navy, and thereby increase our taxes; that to retain the 
Philippine Islands is to govern them without their con- 
sent; that this sounds the knell of the republic, and 
inaugurates the reign of the plutocrat and military autocrat. 

If all this be true, it is unfortunate, as the Philippines 
are ours by conquest and by purchase. We can not give 
them back, and it would seem to be wisdom to seek how 
best to bear those responsibilities that we can not avoid, 
rather than to waste our time in endeavoring to escape 
the inevitable. 

But none of these prophecies of evil will be realized. 
Calamity howlers have predicted the downfall of the repub- 
lic upon every similar occasion in the history of the country. 
When in 1803 Jeiferson purchased the great Louisiana 
Territory it was claimed that this accession threatened at 
no distant day the subversion of the union, and when in 
1848 we purchased from Mexico the land we now inhabit, 
Daniel Webster proclaimed that this acquisition was an 
outrage upon the constitution. 

The objection that we can not acquire or govern terri- 
tory without the consent of the governed has the same 
historical inspiration. This, like many other objections, 
both to the war and its results, springs from that spirit of 
antagonism to any change that has always characterized 
the Silurians in every department of life, the spirit that 
made possible the French Revolution, that opposed the 
American Revolution and would have continued British 
tyranny in America, that cost Spain her colonies, that 
always faces toward the past and would make all the 
tomorrows but repetitions of yesterdays! 

Did we ask the consent of the inhabitants of Louisiana 
or of the Floridas when we purchased these lands? Did 
we consult the wishes of the people of New Mexico and 
California when we purchased these lands from Mexico? 



224 FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 

Is there any difference in principle between the suppression 
of the insurrection in New Mexico and California and in 
the Philippines in 1899 and 1900? Have we ever obtained 
the consent of the natives of Hawaii or of the Alaska 
Indians to be governed from Washington? Louisiana was 
inhabited by many nationalities and native tribes, both 
numerous and warlike. There were 30,000 whites in the 
Territory. We annexed them without their consent, and 
we governed them by a military government in which they 
had no part. In no respect were the people consulted as 
to their government. The same was true as to all the 
Northwest Territory that includes what is now Ohio and 
the adjoining States. All this was done by the men who 
signed the Declaration of Independence, or who were their 
immediate successors. 

These men were all practical men. They knew that 
no popular government can stand long or accomplish much 
for the good of the governed that is not carefully adjusted 
to the conditions and intelligence of the people who are 
to live under it. They, therefore, acquired territory with- 
out consulting the inhabitants and gave them that govern- 
ment that in their opinion was best suited to their needs, 
never stopping to ask how far the government so created 
derived its just powers from the consent of the governed. 
They met the condition that confronted them, and their 
justification is the government they bequeathed to us. 

We must follow the same common-sense policy. In 
determining the question as to the form of government 
to be given to the people of Porto Rico and the Philip- 
pines we must bear in mind that the vast majority of 
them are unable to read or write; that they have had no 
experience in any real self-government, or any really hon- 
est government, but have been for centuries under the 
dominion of arbitrary power; that in all their experience 



FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 225 

and traditions law and freedom have been ideas which were 
not associated with each other, but opposed to each other. 
We must bear in mind that a people who are in this con- 
dition, who have never acquired any real understanding 
of the way to conduct a popular government, who have 
never learned the fundamental and essential lesson of obe- 
dience to the decision of the majority, would lapse into 
anarchy or fall under oligarchy if entrusted now with 
self-government. We would be committing a crime, an 
outrage upon these people and upon the civilized world, 
we would be recreant to our trust if we did not train these 
people in the art of government before allowing them to 
govern themselves. 

"The people of these islands have acquired the moral 
right to be treated by the United States in accordance 
with the underlying principles of justice and freedom which 
we have declared in our constitution, and which are the 
essential safeguards of every individual against the powers 
of any government, because they are essential limitations 
inherent in the very existence of our government." They 
are entitled to demand that they shall not be deprived of 
life, liberty, or property without due process of law, that 
private property shall not be taken for public use without 
compensation, that no law shall be passed impairing the 
obligation of contracts or freedom of religious worship, 
that all men shall be equal before the law, because we 
have declared that these rights belong to all men, because 
there is an implied contract between our government and 
every one under its dominion that these rights shall be 
respected and enforced, because observance of them is part 
of the nature of our government. I do not think that any 
of you doubt but that Congress in the exercise of its con- 
stitutional power to make all needful rules and regulations 



226 FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 

respecting the territory belonging to the United States 
will hold itself sacredly bound by these limitations. 

It will take years to eradicate from our island posses- 
sions the evil effect of centuries of Spanish misrule. For 
years we must in the Philippines sustain the law with vis- 
ible force until confidence is bred of justice, and the hus- 
bandman learns that he will reap what he sows, unmo- 
lested by native brigand or governmental bandit. This 
will require a standing army as large as is now provided 
by law. A great hue and cry is raised against a large 
standing army, and from the pages of history are culled 
the bloody records that standing armies have imprinted 
there of their onslaughts upon the lives and liberties of 
the people. History, like the Bible, can be used to prove 
any crime or virtue that human fears or hopes may con- 
ceive. But history is but an incomplete and an inaccurate 
narrative of the past. It tells nothing of the living present. 
It is for today and tomorrow that we are now planning 
and legislating. The people of this century and the next 
are to produce the soldiers for our army. This army will 
be of the same warp and woof as the people whom it is 
feared they will oppress. They will be American citizens, 
as an American does not cease to be an American citizen 
when he becomes an American soldier. Does any one 
seriously believe that from the common schools of this 
country there can be enlisted an army from whom any 
military system, life, or discipline can eradicate tltat intelli- 
gence, manhood, independence, and love of liberty that has 
made the United States the land of the free? Does any 
one believe that the people that dared in their infancy to 
battle with England and wrested from her unwilling hands 
independence and sovereignty, that has extended the bound- 
aries of this republic from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 
across arid plains, over snow-clad mountains and in the 



FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 227 

face of hostile savages, that stopped not at the ocean's 
bounds, but brought within our domain islands in the sunset 
sea, that fought and won the War of the Rebellion and 
the War with Spain, that has built up this government as 
a tower of strength for struggling humanity from whose 
summit liberty lights the world, that has planted a school- 
house upon every hill and on each schoolhouse has unfurled 
its flag, does any one believe that the descendants of those 
that fought at Bunker Hill or Gettysburg or Santiago have 
aught to fear for their liberties from a standing army 
organized from their midst? If there be such a man, then 
I pity him, and I would not trust him on the firing line. 

Be assured, therefore, my fellow citizens, that you have 
not wandered away from the paths your fathers trod, that 
your government has not changed from a republic to an 
empire, that the Declaration of Independence is today as 
much as ever your guiding cloud by day and pillar of fire 
by night. In acquiring and governing the Philippines you 
follow the example not only of the men who founded this 
republic, but also of those who saved it. The Southern 
states attempted to break up this union. They withdrew 
their consent to be governed by the union. They wanted 
to sacrifice the union to save slavery. Upon the principle 
that all governments derive their just powers from the 
consent of the governed they based their right to secede. 
The Federal government determined to preserve the union, 
to sacrifice slavery to save the union, to keep the union 
intact with or without their consent. Thanks be to the 
God of our country that this was said and done, and that 
no mere declaration of words was allowed to break up 
this greatest of nations. 

The American people have for over a century been grow- 
ing in power and wealth and righteousness. They have 
expanded in territory, increased in wealth, multiplied in 



228 FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 

numbers, developed in power, and held fast to popular 
government. Ever vigilant and vv^atchful of their own 
interests, they have poured out their blood and treasure 
in defense of the rights of others. I do not believe that 
all of a sudden, in the twinkling of an eye, they have 
changed in character, purpose and ambition, courage and 
determination. I do not believe that a people who began 
a war to rescue the Cubans from oppression can end it 
by oppressing the Filipinos. I do not believe that we will 
establish in the Philippines a government different in prin- 
ciple from our own, though different in form. I believe 
that we will give them law, order, and education; that 
we will free them from the tyranny of both native and 
foreigner, and that we will make freedom attractive to 
them by exemplifying its benefits. I believe that, as Presi- 
dent McKinley has said, we will by our treatment of the 
Filipinos lead them to feel that it is their liberty and not 
our power, their welfare and not our gain, that we seek 
to enhance, and that as our flag has never waved over any 
community save in blessing, they will acknowledge that it 
has not lost its gift of benediction by its world-wide journey 
to their shores. 

Great nations must bear great burdens. That is what 
makes them great. Our nation did not seek this Oriental 
burden. It was thrust upon us by circumstances that we 
did not expect and could not control. But we have this 
burden to bear, this responsibility to fulfill, this duty to 
perform. We have never yet shrunk from a danger, neg- 
lected an obligation, or failed in a task. We will not 
close the century with an act of cowardice or an admission 
of incompetency. 

In advocating the retention of the Philippines every 
American can hold up his head, look the world in the 
face, and feel conscious of the nobility of the duty he has 



FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 229 

set himself to perform; and that person is only a vain 
prophet of evil who says that therefor he will ever have 
cause to hang his head. 

Especially in California are the people interested in this 
Philippine question. Our shores are washed by the same 
sea that breaks upon the coast of Asia. The commercial 
possibilities are, however, tempting and dazzling to this 
entire country. Our share of this commerce is growing 
by leaps and bounds. In cotton goods alone are exports 
to China increased from 35,000,000 yards in 1893 to 221,- 
000,000 in 1899. In two years our exports to the Phil- 
ippine Islands have increased from $200,000 to $2,500,000. 
With England, Germany, France, Italy, and Japan holding 
posts of vantage and spheres of influence in China we, with- 
out Manila, would have in time become beggars for the 
crumbs that fell from their tables. With Manila and the 
Philippines as ours we demand and secure from them the 
"open door" for all, and we are in position to do our 
share in preventing China from closing it against all, and 
in the rescue and protection of the foreign ministers in 
China. We have never taken by force or diplomacy any 
of the ports of China, and as the new master of Manila 
we do not want or seek or need any part of her territory. 
We would prefer that the Chinese Empire should remain 
intact, and under the sole dominion of the Emperor of 
China, and we will do everything possible to the accom- 
plishing of this result. But we will also do everything 
possible to protect our national representatives both from 
personal and official injury and insult, and also all our citi- 
zens living or traveling in China, and, therefore, when the 
safety and liberty of our ambassador to Pekin became 
endangered, our marines joined the relief expedition under 
General Seymour and were among the first to enter Tien 
Tsin, the Oregon sailed with her "round-the-Horn" gait 



230 FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 

from Hongkong to Taku, a regiment of United States 
infantry hastened from Manila to rescue their countrymen, 
General Chaffee started across the Pacific to fight his way 
to Pekin, if necessary, as he fought his way up the heights 
of San Juan and El Caney, and we are preparing to send, 
if necessary, more regiments and ships to teach China that 
no one can affront us with impunity. 

It is hoped that this trouble will soon be over, and 
that China, with or without outside assistance, will speedily 
have peace within her borders, and be able to insure the 
safety of the stranger within her gates. But, if this hope 
be not fulfilled, you may rest assured that the civilizing of 
the Orient can not be permanently stopped, that China 
can never again close her doors to the peaceful invasion 
of the traders of the Orient. 

You may also be assured that if the United States is 
compelled, in conjunction with the allied powers, to do 
further battle in China, in protection of its people's rights 
or punishment of their wrongs, the American soldier, fight- 
ing side by side with the soldiers of Europe, will make 
manifest to the world the superiority of his disciplined 
individualism over their machine-drilled battalions, and add 
another laurel to the chaplet that crowns our boys in blue. 

In what a humiliating position would we have been in 
this sudden outbreak if those boys in blue had not been 
nearer to the scene of action than San Francisco? 

Thirty years ago Seward predicted that the Pacific Ocean 
would some day be the chief theater of the world's great 
hereafter. This prophecy is in its fulfillment, this here- 
after is at hand, its day is dawning, its morning is advanc- 
ing, and ere the sun has reached its meridian the Pacific 
Ocean will be the arena on which will be fought and won 
the struggle for the trade and the supremacy of the nations. 
Ages ago when Greece and Persia fought for the mastery 



FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 231 

at Salamis, when Roman triremes ruled the waves, when 
Anthony, lured by Cleopatra, fled from Actium, when Turk- 
ish might was humbled at Lepanto, when Venice was 
queen of the seas, the Mediterranean centered man's ambi- 
tions, hopes, and fears. During the succeeding centuries 
o'er the Atlantic shone the star of destiny emblazoning 
Nelson's fame. But now this star, the morning star of the 
twentieth century, bespangles the skies that dome the Pacific 
Ocean and lights up with its earliest rays the Golden Gate 
that opens up to our metropolis its queenship of the future. 

With a chain of coaling stations and home ports stretch- 
ing across the Pacific, linking together San Francisco, Pago- 
Pago in the Samoan Islands, Honolulu in the Hawaiian 
Islands, Guam in the Ladrones, and Manila in the Phil- 
ippines, this ocean becomes an American sea, policed by 
our cruisers, over which in ever increasing numbers will 
sail the ships bearing our growing commerce with the 
Orient. 

Under such circumstances the twentieth century comes 
full of promise for the United States, and particularly for 
California. 

Therefore, my fellow citizens, we can look with pride 
upon our past, with satisfaction of duty done upon our 
present, with hope upon our future. True to our traditions, 
ever watchful of our liberties and of the rights of others 
committed to our care, loyal to our flag and all that it 
represents, confident that in the future we will not change 
in sturdiness of character and uprightness of purpose, but 
will continue to grow in wealth and power so that as our 
tasks so shall our strength be, feeling that we will ever 
be a light set upon a hill, an exemplar and leader among 
nations, we have every reason and right on this anniver- 
sary of our independence to be proud of our country, our 
flag, and ourselves. 



A POLITICAL ADDRESS 



(Delivered at Metropolitan Temple, San Francisco, Friday 
evening, October 3, 1900.) 



LADIES AND Gentlemen : All my life I have been a 
Democrat. After mature reflection I have determined 
to publicly change my political affiliation, and this evening 
I make this public confession of the faith that is in me. 

I am opposing the Democratic party because it is now 
radical, revolutionary, impractical, and populistic, and 
because its present aspirations are a menace to the welfare 
of the country. 

I am supporting the Republican party because it is con- 
servative, practical, progressive, and creative, and because 
its success at this election is necessary to the continuance 
of prosperity. 

I am leaving the Democratic party because that party 
has dethroned Jefferson, the man of thought, the statesman, 
the philosopher, who believed in sound money and territo- 
rial expansion, and has enthroned Bryan, a man of words, 
who mistakes epigrams for ideas, rhetoric for philosophy, 
declamation for wisdom, personal ambition for patriotism, 
and a dishonest dollar for an honest one. 

I am entering this campaign against the Democratic party 
because it has nominated for the presidency a man who, 
as the old Democratic war horse, Henry Watterson, said 
only two years ago: "He is not the material of which the 
people of the United States have ever made a President, 
nor of which any party has ever before made a candidate," 



A POLITICAL ADDRESS 233 

because his speeches tend to disturb the peace and order 
of the State by their appeals to class distinctions that do 
not exist and to an antagonism between capital and labor 
that can not obtain in this country as at present organized; 
and because he is not honest with the American people. 

I am entering this campaign on behalf of the Republican 
party because its candidate for the presidency has as Presi- 
dent proved himself to be a skillful pilot to our ship of 
state in stormy seas, has shown himself to be one whom 
sudden emergencies can not confuse, nor great problems 
overcome, during whose wise administration the country has 
been blessed with prosperity and crowned with national 
glory, and whose continuance in office for the next four 
years is a guarantee to our hopes of their anticipated 
fulfillment. 

Four years ago the country was startled by the utter- 
ances of the Democratic National Convention as embodied 
in the Chicago platform. At no prior time in its history 
had the United States been in so deplorable a condition. An 
industrial depression covered the land like a pall. For 
several years the unemployed had been growing in num- 
bers, in want, and in despair. Factories were empty, fur- 
naces were cold, and mills had ceased to grind. Banks 
were closing their doors, and depositors were losing their 
savings. Railroads could not pay their interest, and were 
passing into the hands of receivers. The only armies that 
paraded the land were disorderly mobs of idle working- 
men. Strikers in most every department of labor threat- 
ened the stability of the government. Neighbors were 
friends or foes as want or wealth united or divided them. 

It was after several years of these growing evils, and 
at a time of general gloom and discontent, when the growl- 
ings of hunger were becoming ominous, and lean hands 
were threatening to take by force or stealth the bread they 



234 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 

had no opportunity to earn, that three political national 
conventions assembled to nominate candidates for the 
presidency. 

The Democrats, denouncing with bitterness Grover Cleve- 
land, the only Democrat who had led them to success since 
1856, and who was in integrity of character, nobility of 
purpose, in fearlessness and fortitude, one of the greatest 
Americans, and the natural enemy of the Altgelds and 
Bryans and Tillmans, read him out of the party, and with 
him Thomas Jefferson, threw all their teachings after them, 
and installed in their stead the Boy Orator from the Platte, 
William Jennings Bryan, who mistook Bryanism for popu- 
lism, and called it Democracy. They sent him abroad as 
a Populistic aspirant for the presidency, and authorized 
him to preach class distinction, to stir up bitterness on the 
part of the many who had not against the few who then 
had; to cry out against the fortunate, the frugal, the pru- 
dent, the successful ; to put a premium on failure and a 
discount on success; to threaten the independence of the 
judiciary; to invite the people to financial disorder and 
certain bankruptcy; to contradict every doctrine of econom- 
ics and to endeavor to bring about a financial impossi- 
bility — the stability of the double standard of gold and 
silver at a fixed arbitrary ratio of sixteen to one, independ- 
ently of every other nation. 

The silver convention, with like Populistic passion, was 
also captured by the rhetoric of this man's cross of gold. 

The Republicans answered all this political and financial 
madness with a platform that stood for sound, honest money, 
for an independent judiciary, for protection to American 
industries, for union and not for disunion, for peace and 
prosperity, and not for disaster and dissension, and upon 
this platform they placed William McKinley. 



A POLITICAL ADDRESS 235 

Bryan predicted that the going out of his jack-o'-lantern 
would leave the world in utter darkness, impenetrable even 
by the flame that liberty holds aloft to light the world. 

McKinley predicted that Republican success would mean 
prosperity in place of poverty, work instead of violence for 
idle hands, wealth at home, honor and respect abroad. 

McKinley was elected, and all the fog and dust of Bryan- 
ism disappeared, and this country stepped out of the shadow 
and into the sun. 

It was because I believed that this would be the result 
that in 1896 I voted for McKinley. It is because I believe 
that the election of Bryan on the rechristened Chicago 
platform would undo much of McKinley's good work, 
would disturb business, arrest enterprise, and suspend the 
labor of thousands; it is because of McKinley's policy of 
honor, and because of Bryan's proposed policy of dishonor, 
that I shall again vote for McKinley. 

The paramount issue in this campaign is Bryanism, and 
Bryanism means political dishonesty, political inexperience, 
political bad judgment, and the domination of personal 
opinion influenced by fanaticism over the wisdom of states- 
men and the experience of a century of struggle and growth. 
As the Democratic party has indorsed Bryanism, I am 
opposed to the Democratic party. 

In this campaign we have an unusual opportunity of 
comparing the two candidates by the promises made by 
McKinley four years ago and their fulfillment, and by the 
predictions made then by Bryan and their non-fulfillment. 

A very gifted American orator once delivered a lecture 
which he entitled ''The Mistakes of Moses." This evening 
I propose to speak of the "Mistakes of Bryan." 

We all know that hindsight is more reliable than fore- 
sight, and that it is easier to be a historian than a prophet, 
yet we also know that there always must be prophets, lead- 



236 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 

ers, guides, whose duty it is to point the way, and whose 
skill to guide must be in proportion to their ability to 
profit by their own experience or the experience of others. 
Of what availeth the lessons of yesterday if they help us 
not in meeting the inevitable tomorrow? 

Judged by this standard, Mr. Bryan has shown himself 
little adapted to lead or guide the people. In 1896 he 
did not point out a road for us to travel that would not 
have led to disaster, and every road that he designated as 
dangerous has led the people in safety to the land of pros- 
perity they so eagerly and so long had sought. In the lan- 
guage of President McKinley, "The prophet of evil no 
longer commands confidence, because he has been proved 
to be a false prophet." 

FOREIGN TRADE. 

In the campaign of 1896 Bryan made the following 
prophecy: *Tf McKinley and the Republican party are 
successful and put in power for the next four years, wages 
will be decreased, hard times will come upon us, mort- 
gages on our homes will be foreclosed by the money-lenders, 
shops and factories will close. We will export no goods, 
and we will import from foreign lands all the goods we 
use. Thus will ruin come, and misery will be with us." 

During the past four years have we been able to sell 
our products abroad? Today we can supply our domestic 
market with manufactures by running our factories only 
eight months of the year, for our productive power has 
increased in forty years threefold, while our population has 
increased only one hundred and forty-two per cent, and 
we must therefore export one-third of our total manufac- 
tures or close down our factories for the remaining four 
months. The economic policy that keeps our mills run- 
ning during the entire twelve months should therefore meet 
with the people's approval. 



A POLITICAL ADDRESS 237 

I submit that the Republican party has kept the facto- 
ries running for a full period of twelve months through 
an economic policy based on protection to American indus- 
tries and on an honest dollar. 

In 1892, under the McKinley tariff, our exports for the 
first time passed the billion-dollar mark. In 1893, the first 
year of Cleveland's administration, under the depressing 
effect of threatened free trade, our exports were $180,- 
000,000 less than in 1892. In 1895, when the Wilson 
Democratic tariff was in full operation, our exports were 
$222,000,000 less than in 1892. In 1897, the first year 
of McKinley's administration, under the encouraging 
influence of the promise of protection and the assurance of 
financial honesty, our exports again touched the billion- 
dollar mark, making a gain of over $200,000,000. 

During the last two years of Cleveland's last term, and 
under the Wilson Democratic tariff, our exports exceeded 
our imports only $180,000,000. During the last two years 
of McKinley's administration, and under the Dingley Repub- 
lican tariff, our exports exceeded our imports more than 
$1,000,000,000. 

In other words we sold to foreigners $894,000,000 more 
of products during McKinley's last two years, and under 
Republican tariff, than we did under Cleveland's last two 
years and under a Democratic tariff, and this is sufficient 
reason for the smoke coming out of every smoke-stack and 
for the scarcity of labor. 

At the end of the Harrison administration the balance 
of trade in our favor was $212,000,000. At the end of 
Cleveland's administration the balance had decreased to 
$102,000,000. At the end of McKinley's administration 
this balance will exceed $544,000,000. 

These figures include all our exports, of both manufac- 
tures and raw goods, and they are very comforting. Much 



238 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 

more comforting, however, because they concern more of 
our people, and more strongly refuting Bryan's prediction 
that under the gold standard we can not sell our products 
abroad at remunerative prices, are the following figures as 
to manufactures alone: 

In 1896, under Cleveland, we paid to foreigners for 
manufactures $333,000,000, and sold to them manufactures 
only to the amount of $288,000,000, leaving a balance 
against us of $105,000,000. In 1897, under McKinley, 
we paid out for manufactures $27,000,000 less and received 
$49,000,000 more than in 1896, leaving a balance against 
us of only $27,000,000. 

In 1898 we received more for manufactures than we 
paid out, leaving a balance in our favor of $60,000,000, 
and in 1899 this balance was increased to $80,000,000. 
In 1900 we are exporting every day more than $1,000,000 
of the products of our factories, and we are not losing 
money on the goods. 

To sum up these statistics : During McKinley's admin- 
istration our excess of exports over imports has been over 
five times as much as it was during the one hundred and 
six years prior thereto— $383,028,497 against $2,028,884— 
and yet, according to Bryan, protection has slain its thou- 
sands and the gold standard its tens of thousands. 

Such has been the outcome of Bryan's predictions. He 
predicted the downward course of wheat if silver continued 
to fall, and yet we all remember how wheat began to rise 
soon after the defeat of the free coinage of silver. 

When Bryan was nominated in 1896 wheat was 65 cents 
a bushel, silver was 69 cents an ounce. Six months there- 
after wheat was $1.04 and silver was 65 cents. In May, 
1898, wheat was $1.30 and silver was 56^ cents. At the 
date of Bryan's second nomination wheat was 50 per cent 



A POLITICAL ADDRESS 239 

higher and silver 12 per cent lower than at the date of 
his first nomination. 

GOLD STANDARD. 

The following are some of Bryan's mistakes as to the 
gold standard : 

At Newton, la., on August 10, 1896, he used the follow- 
ing language: "The law upon which we base our fight is 
as sure as the law of gravitation. If we have a gold standard 
prices are as certain to fall as the stone which is thrown 
into the air." 

In his acceptance of the Democratic nomination at New 
York, in 1896, he said: "A gold standard dissolves all 
enterprise and paralyzes industry. A gold standard is ruin- 
ous to merchants and manufacturers. Salvation of business 
occupations depends on business conditions, and the gold 
standard both lessens the amount and threatens the perma- 
nency of those salaries." A gold standard has compelled 
the American people to pay an increasing tribute to the 
creditor nations of the world." "Savings-bank depositors 
know that under a gold standard there is increasing danger 
that they will lose their deposits because of the inability of 
the banks to collect their assets; and they will further 
know that, if the gold standard is to continue indefinitely, 
they may be compelled to withdraw their deposits in order 
to pay living expenses." 

At Minneapolis, Minn., he said: "The gold standard 
means dearer money; dearer money means cheaper prop- 
erty; cheaper property means harder times; harder times 
mean more people out of work; more people out of work 
means more people destitute; more people destitute means 
more people desperate ; more people desperate means more 
crime." 

We have now a gold standard, and have practically had 
it since McKinley's election. Have prices fallen as com- 



240 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 

pared with Cleveland's administration? Did the election 
of McKinley discourage enterprise and paralyze industry? 
Have times been harder than before McKinley's election? 
Are we paying an increasing tribute to foreign nations? 
Are savings-bank depositors withdrawing their deposits to 
pay living expenses? Let us see. 

As to prices. — On October 1, 1897, six months after 
McKinley became President, prices had risen 2 per cent, 
and in July, 1899, they had risen 11 per cent. 

In 1896 the highest price of wheat in New York was 
68 cents a bushel; in 1900 it was 92 1^ cents. In like 
manner, corn was 30 cents, now 47 cents; oats 23 cents, 
now 28 cents; lard was 3^^ cents, now 6.9 cents; beef 
was $9 a barrel, now $12; Ohio XX wool was 17 cents, 
now 30^/2 cents. In the one article of live-stock prices have 
so risen that the farmers today can sell out for $501,444,474 
more than they could have obtained in 1896. 

As to labor. — In 1898 and 1899, Samuel Gompers, presi- 
dent of the American Federation of Labor, made his reports 
as to the condition of the laboring men: 

In January, 1898, within less than a year after the 
inauguration of President McKinley, he said in a published 
article: "That terrible period for the wage-earners of this 
country which began in 1893, and which has left behind 
it such a record of horror, hunger, and misery, practically 
ended with the dawn of the year 1897. Wages had been 
steadily forced down from 1893 till towards the end of 
1895, and it was variously estimated that between two mil- 
lion and two and a half million wage-earners were unem- 
ployed." 

In December, 1899, he said in his report to the conven- 
tion of the American Federation of Labor: "The revival 
of industry which we have witnessed within the past year 
is one for general congratulation, and it should be our pur- 



A POLITICAL ADDRESS 241 

pose to endeavor to prolong this era of more general employ- 
ment and industrial activity. In this effort no power is 
so potent as organized labor, if we but follow a right and 
practical course. It is beyond question that the wages of 
the organized workers have been increased, and in many 
instances the hours of labor either reduced or at least 
maintained." 

Mr. Gompers could also have said that the true friend 
of the wage-earner is he who opens a factory where a man 
may earn his living by the sweat of his face, independence 
waiting on strength and opportunity and not on any man's 
favor, and that that man, though he speak with the elo- 
quence of Paul, is a wage-earner's enemy who, in place 
of a factory, opens a soup-house where hunger waits upon 
generosity and independence gives place to gratitude ! 

As to savings banks. — Instead of the depositors in savings 
banks withdrawing their deposits, we find that the number 
of depositors increased 622,324 in three years under McKin- 
ley, and the amount of deposits increased $419,000,000. 

In the State of New York alone there has been an increase 
of 103,168 depositors in savings banks in the past year. 
These depositors know of Bryan's prophecies in this regard, 
and also of his threats, and while remembering the failure 
of his prophecies they will see that he is not put in a posi- 
tion to carry out his threats of restoring the free and unlim- 
ited coinage of silver at 16 to 1, and thus cut their dollars 
in two, and force them to draw them out in order to pay 
living expenses. 

As to commercial failures. — Bryan said in his 1896 speech 
of acceptance: "It is only necessary to note the increasing 
number of failures in order to know that a gold standard 
is ruinous to merchants and manufacturers." 

Note the following list of commercial failures in the 
United States : 1896,15,088; 1898,12,186; 1899,9,710. 



242 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 

The total sum of the failures in 1899 was $41,000,000 
less than in 1898, $137,000,000 less than in 1896. 
The failures under Harrison amounted to $114,000,000, 
under Cleveland to $226,000,000, under McKinley to only 
$91,000,000. 

As to foreign tribute. — The gold standard, instead of 
increasing our tribute to foreigners, seems to have less- 
ened it. 

Not only are we now able to pay our foreign debts at 
the rate of over $800,000,000 a year, such being the annual 
balance in our favor, but in the past eighteen months we 
have loaned money to other nations — $3,000,000 to the city 
of Montreal, $10,000,000 to Russia, $26,000,000 to Eng- 
land, $10,000,000 to Sweden, and $25,000,000 to Germany. 

As to scarcity of money. — On March 14, 1900, we finally 
established by law the gold standard, that monometalism 
which the Chicago platform, rechristened at Kansas City, 
stated "has locked fast the prosperity of an industrial people 
in the paralysis of hard times." 

If this is true, this lock must have been broken, for 
this country has so completely emerged from hard times 
that today its manufactures exceed those of England, France, 
and Germany combined; it is exporting annually $500,- 
000,000 more than it imports; its farmers can not get 
enough men to harvest their crops; its railroads can not 
get cars enough to carry the freight ; its savings banks are 
so swamped with deposits that they do not know where 
to invest them, and its credit is so good that between the 
passage of this gold-standard law on March 14 and June 

1 it refunded over $285,000,000 of its 3-per-cent, 4-per- 
cent, and 5-per-cent bonds, with its bonds bearing only 

2 per cent at par, and thus saved over $7,000,000 in inter- 
est, while English consols, that have always been consid- 
ered the best securities on the market, and which were 



A POLITICAL ADDRESS 243 

bearing 2^ per cent interest, were two points below par. 
Instead of our prosperity being locked fast in the paralysis 
of hard times, we are furnishing food and products to for- 
eign consumers at a good profit, we are lending them money 
at fair interest with which to pay their bills to us, and we 
have so much money to invest that even in the present 
unparalleled expansion of business we can't find ways enough 
at home of salting down our profits. 

Bryan predicted in 1896 that the successful opposition 
to the free coinage of silver at the arbitrary ratio of 16 
to 1 would make money scarce, and that there would be 
no addition to the currency without free coinage of silver 
at 16 to 1, and yet since the defeat of free coinage the 
total amount of money in the country has increased over 
$500,000,000 (from $1,509,725,200 to $2,060,525,463), the 
total amount of gold and gold certificates has increased over 
$300,000,000 (from $498,449,242 to $814,063,155), and the 
per capita of money has increased from 21.10 to $25. 

It is true that the production of gold during the last 
four years has been very large, in 1899 the United States 
alone producing $72,500,000 and the world at large pro- 
ducing $312,307,819, and to this increased production alone 
Bryan attributes our prosperity and the increase of money 
in circulation. He overlooks the fact that this gold has 
stayed in this country to pay for our increasing exports, 
and that this gold has remained here because there is no 
longer any fear of the 50-cent silver dollar. 

He overlooks the fact that under the free coinage of 
silver at 16 to 1 this gold would have left this country as 
fast as it was produced or came in. 

During the campaign of 1896, because of Bryan's proph- 
ecies of evil, because of his free-silver fallacies, because 
of hard times, because of commercial, agricultural, and 
financial depression, because of the fear of Bryan's election, 



244 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 

gold was at a premium. It was withdrawn from circula- 
tion, withheld from investment, and locked up in the deposit 
vaults or sent abroad. You could not borrow money on 
anything, not even on real estate. 

During this campaign in the midst of good times, of 
commercial, agricultural, and financial prosperity, because 
of the success of the Republican policy of protection and 
honest money, and because there is no possibility of Bryan's 
election, gold is not in hiding, but is seeking investment, 
and is so plentiful that we are loaning money to the rest 
of the world, and our treasury has today the greatest gold 
stock of the world. The most important factor showing our 
great prosperity is the fact that in 1897, 1898, and 1899 
the large merchandise balance was attended by considerable 
gold imports, but in the past twelve months, with the stock 
of gold in the United States unusually large, America has 
left abroad the whole of the large favorable trade balance, 
and has also sent abroad a considerable amount of gold. 

During Cleveland's administration American securities 
held abroad were thrown upon the market because of the 
fear of the adoption of free coinage in this country and 
of our paying our bonds in 50-cent silver dollars, and Cleve- 
land had to borrow gold to bolster up American credit. At 
the end of McKinley's administration American credit is 
so good that its 2-per-cent bonds sell at par. 

Mr. Bryan has shown himself unfit for the high office 
of President, not only because the logic of events has proved 
the fallacy of all his opinions, but because he stubbornly 
refuses to be convinced of his error, and places his self- 
created infallibility above the truth itself. The Democratic 
portion of his partisans were willing to admit that the free 
coinage of silver was not again worth fighting for and 
would not be acceptable to the people, and yet, with the 
history of the immediate past, with the living present, nay, 



A POLITICAL ADDRESS 245 

with the history of the Democratic party before him, he 
forced them to again declare this absurdity as a principle of 
Democracy. He must know that all attempts to fix a legal 
ratio at any rate differing from the commercial ratio have 
proved disastrous when coupled with the free and unlimited 
coinage of the inferior metal. He must know that a very 
small variation of the commercial ratio from the coinage 
ratio, even a variation of one cent, is sufficient to expel 
the superior metal from the country and disturb all busi- 
ness. He must know this, because this is not a new ques- 
tion, because Jefferson and Jackson and all the great found- 
ers of the Democratic party knew and admitted it. When 
the first United States coinage act was passed, it provided 
for the free coinage of gold and silver at a ratio of 15 to 1, 
but this act could not make the two metals circulate together, 
as the ratio was not correct, and discriminated against gold, 
and consequently gold was exported. In 1834 the ratio 
was changed to 16 to 1, a discrimination against silver, 
and silver was driven out. The true ratio at that time 
was somewhere between 15 to 1 and 16 to 1. But small 
as was the variation in either case from the commercial 
ratio of the two metals, it was sufficient to drive out of 
circulation the metal whose commercial value was discrim- 
inated against. 

Today the commercial ratio is 32 to 1. How much more 
disastrous would therefore be the free and unlimited coinage 
of silver at the coinage ratio of 16 to 1? 

The result in 1834 was that the Democratic financiers 
of that time admitted that "the fluctuations in the value 
of gold and silver can not be controlled" and a committee 
from the Democratic Congress reported in February, 1834, 
"that there are inherent and incurable defects in the system 
which regulates the standard of value in both gold and 
silver; its instability as a measure on contracts and its 



246 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 

mutability as the practical currency of a particular nation 
are serious imperfections, whilst the impossibility of main- 
taining both metals in concurrent, simultaneous, or promis- 
cuous circulation appears to be clearly ascertained; that 
the standard being fixed in one metal is the nearest approach 
to invariableness, and precludes the necessity of further 
legislative interference." 

This report is good monetary philosophy today, and has 
been adopted by all the nations except China, Corea, Persia, 
Siam, Mexico, and some of the smaller republics of Central 
and South America. It is the philosophy of the nations 
that do 95 per cent of the world's commerce. 

A country on a double basis of gold and silver, with the 
free and unlimited coinage of silver at a ratio of 16 to 1, 
necessarily will become a country with a silver basis alone, 
as witness Mexico and China. A country with a double 
basis of gold and silver, with a limited coinage of silver 
at the ratio of 16 to 1, is on a gold basis, and it gets its 
share of the world's gold which its proportion of the world's 
business brings to it. 

We have the satisfaction of knowing that of all the 
nations the United States attracts and holds the largest 
stock of gold because the volume of its business transactions 
exceeds that of any other nation. We have also the satis- 
faction of knowing that its every paper or silver dollar is 
exchangeable at par in ordinary business transactions for 
gold at the same nominal value. We are doing business 
on this basis, and to our great enrichment. We have given 
our pledge to the world that the word "dollar" in every 
American contract or obligation means a dollar in gold or 
the actual equivalent thereof. We have said to the laborer 
that a dollar's wage means one hundred cents in gold. 

To violate this pledge to laborer, investor, creditor, 
whether foreign or domestic, would be an act of dishonor. 



A POLITICAL ADDRESS 247 

I feel that the American people understand this question 
and appreciate it, and that "they hold their financial honor 
as sacred as their flag, and can be relied on to guard it 
with the same sacred vigilance." 

But let us look the danger full in the face. There are 
some $700,000,000 of United States bonds payable in coin. 
They were sold for gold coin and upon the implied under- 
standing that they will be paid in gold coin, principal and 
interest. Mr. Bryan could order the interest to be paid in 
silver, and he would order it to be paid in silver. 

It is claimed that the payees could take their silver to 
the treasury and have it redeemed in gold. It is claimed 
that under the present currency law free silver is impossible. 
It is claimed that any weakness in this law can be cured 
by the present Congress after Bryan's election and before 
his inauguration. But all this could not remedy the evil 
of his election. 

The election of Bryan would be accompanied by the 
election of a Democratic House of Representatives, and the 
State legislatures would make the Senate Democratic in 
^901. 

Industry, commerce, and enterprise are based on credit, 
and credit is based on confidence, and when confidence is 
destroyed credit dies, and confidence would be destroyed by 
the election of Bryan — pledged to destroy the gold stand- 
ard; pledged to act independently of all other nations in 
establishing our financial policy ; pledged to take the United 
States from the front rank of the nations that do 95 per 
cent of the world's business and place it with those that 
now do only 5 per cent ; pledged to substitute free trade 
for protection ; pledged to unsettle everything, to introduce 
confusion where now is order, uncertainty where now is 
certainty, the silence of idleness where now is heard the 
busy hum of industry, the crowded soup-house for the full 



248 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 

dinner-pail, to place an Altgeld on the supreme bench, a 
Tillman in the cabinet, to turn over to Aguinaldo, with 
his pockets lined with the traitor's gold and his hands red 
with the blood of our soldiers, the trust we agreed in 
sight of God and man faithfully ourselves to fulfill. 

The American people know that the payment of one 
set of coupons in silver would be an earnest of what is 
to come, that it would therefore jeopardize the credit of 
this government and this people, that immediately loans 
would become difficult, investments would stop, payments 
would be enforced, manufacturing would be suspended or 
curtailed, and idle workingmen would curse the cry of 
imperialism that was used to blind them to the real dangers 
of Bryanism. 

The last Democratic convention selected the Fourth of 
July as its date of meeting, and endeavored to bring about 
the nomination of Mr. Bryan upon that day in order that 
he might appropriate as his own special platform the Dec- 
laration of Independence. He, however, did not then fully 
appreciate this opportunity, but preferred to build his plat- 
form with his owm well-worn plank of 16 to 1, and he 
threatened to decline to lead the grand old party to another 
defeat unless this silver heresy was again declared to be 
the shibboleth of the party. He would not be a candidate 
upon a platform that did not declare in favor of 16 to 1, 
and yet he became a candidate upon the platform that 
subordinated it to imperialism, and declared the latter the 
paramount issue of the campaign. 

The controlling spirit of giving this paramountcy to 
imperialism was Richard Croker, boss of Tammany and boss 
of the ice trust, a trust that included among its stockhold- 
ers most of the leading Bryanite, pro-silver, anti-trust Dem- 
ocratic officials of New York, a trust that raised the price 
of ice and shut off all 5 -cent purchases during one of the 



A POLITICAL ADDRESS 249 

hottest summers New York ever had, and thus made it hot 
for the poor, whom Mr. Bryan thinks Providence placed 
under his special care. Mr. Croker, in his worry over his 
ice troubles, precipitated by Roosevelt, evidently for 
got a published statement of his in which he said: "I 
believe in holding whatever we have gained by annexation, 
purchase, or war. . . If the great country west of the 
Rocky Mountains were filled with wild Indians, how long 
would it take us to suppress them and make them respect 
our laws and constitution? The same thing applies to the 
Philippines and other countries that may fall into our hands 
by the providence of peace and war." 

The leading newspaper supporting this paramount issue 
is the San Francisco Examiner. It evidently has forgotten 
that on April 27, 1899, it said: "We trust that Mr. Bryan 
will yet range himself in line with the national aspirations 
for expansion. . . The popular instinct of a nation can 
not be changed in sixteen months, nor can a creature of 
expediency be converted into a statesman by an appeal to 
the truths of history. Mr. Bryan may think he is close 
to the people, and that his silly talk about 'imperialism' 
moves them, but he will soon find out that the Americans 
are as much in favor of expansion today as they were when 
they applauded the acquisition of Louisiana Territory by 
that noted imperialist, Thomas Jefferson." 

On the ninth of August Mr. Bryan journeyed to Indian- 
apolis to be formally notified of his nomination by the 
Democratic convention. The notification was made in a 
public park, whither he was escorted by brass bands and 
uniformed clubs, and where thousands assembled to hear 
him sound the key-note of his campaign. He was expected 
to open the Democratic campaign and to give to all Demo- 
cratic orators their political cue. His address was carefully 
prepared and read from manuscript. It filled columns in 



250 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 

the newspapers, and yet there was scarcely one word in 
it about the people of this country or their intersets. The 
Filipinos centered all his attention, and the American work- 
man's crown of thorns and cross of gold were forgotten 
for the more absorbing troubles of the Malays. Not even 
the disfranchised negro of the South was remembered by 
this man whose convention met on the fourth day of July. 
His tears would flow for the distant brown man but not 
for the black man at home. 

I can readily understand that Mr. Bryan appreciated the 
fact that the American people do not need his solicitude, 
and that therefore he must go far from home to find some 
one over whom to lament, just as he went far from his own 
home to receive the notification of his nomination. 

He seems, however, to have forgotten his letter of accept- 
ance of his nomination in 1896, wherein he said "until the 
money question is fully and finally settled the American 
people will not consent to the consideration of any other 
important question," for he still claims that the money 
question is not settled, or he thinks that the American 
people have forgotten it. He will find that the American 
people will never consider the money question as settled until 
he ceases to be a menace to the financial stability of the 
country, and that they will consider him to be such a menace 
until he retracts the following statement made by him in 
1896, to wit: "If there is any one who believes that a gold 
standard is a good thing, or that it must be maintained, I 
ask him not to cast his vote for me, for I promise him it will 
not be maintained in the country longer than I am able to 
get rid of it." 

Mr. Bryan will find that the American people know that 
his cry of imperialism, the calling it the paramount issue 
of the campaign, is but a mask to cover his purpose to 
establish the free coinage of silver, a mask to cover his 



A POLITICAL ADDRESS 251 

purpose to bring in free trade, a mask to cover his purpose 
to overthrow the banking system, a mask to cover an attack 
on the Supreme Court, and a purpose to reorganize it if 
he can get the opportunity. 

Some one has well said that this talk of imperialism is 
like the rattle of a snake that hurts nobody, but that free 
silver is the poisoned fang in the head of the reptile that 
is dangerous. 

But what of imperialism? Mr. Bryan enlisted in the 
war against Spain not as a private, but as a colonel. 
The war ended but with no additional laurels on Colo- 
nel Bryan's brow, and he looked around for an oppor- 
tunity to get into the procession. The band-wagon with 
Mr. McKinley, and Roosevelt, and Dewey, and Sampson, 
and Schley, and Shafter, and Wood, and Lawson, and 
Chaffee, and McArthur aboard had gone by, but there 
was still a chance to get in at the head of the second divi- 
sion, which he hoped would be remembered best because 
it would be seen last. The treaty of Paris acknowledging 
the independence of Cuba and ceding to us Porto Rico, 
Guam, and the Philippines was before the Senate for rati- 
fication. There was danger of its defeat. The leading 
Democratic papers were bursting from expansion. The hour 
of the great coup had come, and Mr. Bryan was the man 
for the hour. Here was a chance to become marshal of 
the second division of the parade. To see the opportunity 
was to grasp it, and the Nebraska colonel doffed his uni- 
form and hied him, at his own request, to Washington to 
save the treaty. According to his ambition his duty was 
in Washington. Before the vote was taken on the treaty 
the Filipinos had succeeded in bringing about a clash of 
arms with the American army, and while the vote was being 
taken they were shooting at our flag and our soldiers. 
That should have been Mr. Bryan's signal for opposing the 



252 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 

treaty if he was then in favor of an immediate promise 
of independence to the Filipinos. He knew that the treaty 
ceded Porto Rico and the Philippine Islands absolutely to 
the United States; that it provided that the United States 
should pay $20,000,000 for the Philippine Islands; that 
the independence of Cuba was guaranteed, and not the 
independence of either Porto Rico or the Philippines, but 
that, on the contrary, it was provided that "the civil rights 
and political status of the native inhabitants of the terri- 
tories hereby ceded to the United States shall be determined 
by the Congress." 

He knew that we could not, with any pride or self- 
respect, adopt the treaty and thereby accept sovereignty, and 
then yield this sovereignty to those firing on our flag. He 
knew that we must and that we would put down the insur- 
rection before we would talk of the independence of the 
insurgents. He knew that we had never voluntarily given 
independence to the native inhabitants of any territory ever 
acquired by us, and that none could force us to give that 
which we had determined it was our right to control. 
Knowing all this, he still advocated, and, more than any 
other man, secured the ratification of the treaty. Without 
his aid it would have been defeated. When, therefore, he 
says that "that party is responsible for the shedding of 
American blood in the Philippines that was responsible for 
a treaty that made free men of Cubans and tried to make 
vassals of the Filipinos," the people will point their finger 
at him and exclaim, "Thou art the man!" 

Now he says that he advocated the adoption of the treaty 
in order that we might assume the task of giving independ- 
ence to the Filipinos. If Aguinaldo had not attacked our 
soldiers, if he had not attempted to drive us out of the 
islands by shot and shell and fire and massacre, who knows 
what would have been done by us? We give nothing under 



A POLITICAL ADDRESS 253 

fire. No, Mr. Bryan, there was but one course for Mr. 
McKinley to take after Aguinaldo had fired on our flag, 
and the Senate had so ratified the treaty, and that course 
he took, and is now pursuing, and the American people 
will cry out in no uncertain tone : "Well done, good and 
faithful servant." 

In further explanation of his advocacy of this treaty, 
Mr. Bryan said: "I believe that we are now in a better 
position to wage a successful contest against imperialism 
than we would have been had the treaty been rejected. 
With the treaty ratified, a clean-cut issue is presented 
between a government by consent and a government by force, 
and imperialism must bear the responsibility for all that 
happens until the question is settled." 

This sounds as if Mr. Bryan was then setting up a man 
of straw in order to knock him down, and that he advo- 
cated the ratification of the treaty in order to make an 
imperialist of the President and then attack him for his 
imperialism, for there certainly could have been no charge 
of taking the islands if we did not take them. The balance 
of his explanation is just as flimsy. He said: "If the treaty 
had been rejected the opponents of imperialism would have 
been held responsible for any international complications 
which might have arisen before the ratification of another 
treaty." 

How could thees complications have concerned this coun- 
try? If we did not want the Philippines, if we declined 
to have them, what business was it of ours what became 
of them or who took them or who fought over them? 

So much for Mr. Bryan's explanation of his reasons for 
advocating the ratification of the treaty. Now, as to his 
remedy for this Philippine trouble, he said: "If elected, 
I shall convene Congress in extraordinary session as soon 
as I am inaugurated, and recommend an immediate declara- 



254 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 

tion of the nation's purpose — first, to establish a stable form 
of government in the Philippine Islands, just as we are 
now establishing a stable form of government in the island 
of Cuba; second, to give independence to the Filipinos, 
just as we have promised to give independence to the 
Cubans; third, to protect the Filipinos from outside inter- 
ference while they work out their destiny, just as we have 
protected the republics of Central and South America, and 
are, by the Monroe Doctrine, pledged to protect Cuba." 

The anti-imperialists first demanded that we drop the 
Philippines like a hot potato, and run home. A noted 
college president said that on some dark night we should 
steal out as quietly as we stole in. Now, they say that 
we should not steal out, but that we should stay there, 
and do three things, to wit : ( 1 ) Establish a stable form 
of government ; ( 2 ) Give them independence ; ( 3 ) Protect 
them from outside interference. 

McKinley has twice replied to this proposition. In his 
last annual message he said: "The suggestion has been 
made that we could renounce our authority over the islands, 
and, giving them independence, could retain a protectorate 
over them. This proposition will not be found, I am sure, 
worthy of your serious attention. Such an arrangement 
would involve, at the outset, a cruel breach of faith. It 
would place the peaceable and loyal majority, who ask 
nothing better than to accept our authority, at the mercy 
of the minority of armed insurgents. . . It would make 
us responsible for the acts of the insurgent leaders and give 
us no power to control them. It could charge us with a 
task of protecting them against each other and defending 
them against any foreign power with which they chose to 
quarrel. In short, it would take from the Congress of the 
United States the power of declaring war and vest that 
tremendous prerogative in the Tagal leader of the hour. 



A POLITICAL ADDRESS 255 

It does not seem desirable that I should recommend at this 
time a separate and final form of government for those 
islands. When peace should be restored, it shall be the 
duty of Congress to construct a plan of government which 
shall establish and maintain peace and order in the Phil- 
ippines." 

In his letter of acceptance he states the proposition with 
a clearness and terseness that must satisfy the American 
people : 

"In short, the proposition of those opposed to us is to 
continue all the obligations in the Philippines which now 
rest upon the government, only changing the relation from 
principal, which now exists, to that of surety. Our respon- 
sibility is to remain, but our power is to be diminished. 
Our obligation is to be no less, but our title is to be surren- 
dered to another power, which is without experience or 
training, or the ability to maintain a stable government at 
home, and absolutely helpless to perform its international 
obligations with the rest of the world. To this we are 
opposed. We should not yield our title while our obliga- 
tions last." 

If the Filipinos are to be independent they may prefer 
and will have the right to select their own protector. They 
may order us to keep our Monroe Doctrine at home. We 
certainly are under no moral or other obligations to pro- 
tect an independent people living on the other side of the 
world, and we have better use for our money. The Monroe 
Doctrine has to be stretched to cover America. It will not 
stand an Oriental expansion. 

McKinley is now endeavoring to establish a stable form 
of government in these islands, and would have progressed 
much further in his task but for the conduct of Mr. Bryan 
and his friends. But, if we are to be controlled in this task 
by the doctrine of the "consent of the governed," as inter- 



256 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 

preted by Mr. Bryan and his parties, what form of govern- 
ment would we establish under Mr. Bryan's leadership? 
We can not very consistently spend twenty millions for the 
privilege, and many more millions in establishing any other 
than a Republican form of government. But suppose the 
Filipinos want a dictatorship, such as Aguinaldo proclaimed, 
or a monarchy, or an oligarchy; or suppose the Tagalogs, 
who mmiber 1,500,000, want one form, and the Visayans, 
who number 2,500,000, another, and the Moros another, and 
the Ilocanos another ! If we can give them only that form 
of government to which they consent, what a hollow mock- 
ery it would be to say to them: "Choose your government; 
your consent is a prerequisite to any action on our part, 
but you must choose a republic, as we must give you some 
form of government, and we can not establish any other 
without destroying our own." 

Whose consent shall we obtain? There is no Philippine 
people, as we use the term. We have already the consent 
of the Visayans in Negros, of the Moros in Sulu, and of 
a majority of the Tagalogs in Luzon. 

Mr. Bryan knows as well as does the President that the 
insurgents under Aguinaldo constitute a minority not only 
of the Filipinos, but also of the Tagalogs. The reports of 
the two commissions and of the military commanders are 
unanimous in stating that the majority of the people are 
friendly to this government. 

The President, therefore, very pertinently says in his let- 
ter of acceptance : "We are asked to transfer our sovereignty 
to a small minority in the islands without consulting the 
majority, and to abandon the largest portion of the popu- 
lation, which has been loyal to us, to the cruelties of the 
guerrilla insurgent bands. More than this, we are asked 
to protect this minority in establishing a government, and 
to this end repress all opposition of the majority. We are 



A POLITICAL ADDRESS 257 

required to set up a stable government in the interest of 
those who have assailed our sovereignty and fired on our 
soldiers, and then to maintain it at any cost or sacrifice 
against its enemies within and against those having ambi- 
tious designs without. The American people will not make 
the murderers of our soldiers the agents of the republic to 
convey the blessings of liberty and order to the Philippines. 
They will not make them the builders of the new common- 
wealth. What, then, is the real issue on this subject? 
Whether it is paramount to any other or not, it is whether 
we shall be responsible for the government of the Philip- 
pines with the sovereignty and authority which enables us 
to guide them to regulated liberty, law, safety, and progress, 
or whether we shall be responsible for the forcible and 
arbitrary government of a minority without sovereignty 
and authority on our part, and only the embarrassment of 
a protectorate which draws us into their troubles without 
the power of preventing them." 

The President could have said: "A minority headed by 
Aguinaldo, who sold his country and his right to live therein 
for Spanish gold, who planned and ordered the massacre 
of every American soldier and civilian and every other for- 
eigner in Manila, including women and children." 

This minority is encouraged to continue the insurrection 
by the course taken by the Democratic party and by the 
utterances of Mr. Bryan. This is proved by the report 
of the last commission, by the reports of our generals, and 
by the Filipinos themselves. 

The present commission, headed by Judge Taft, an anti- 
expansionist, and containing on its board Mr. Wright, a 
Democrat, and Professor Moses, of our university, whom 
we all know, recently reported as follows: "Disturbances 
in parts of the islands, kept up and avowed by insurgent 
proclamation and orders to influence election, do not show 



258 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 

an unfriendly attitude of a majority of the people of the 
provinces where they occur. . . Uncertainty as to the 
future policy of the United States and the defenselessness 
of the people without arms largely prevent them from aid- 
ing the Americans in suppressing outrages. . . It is con- 
ceded by all but the men in arms, and is implied in their 
proclamations, that if the election confirms the present 
policy the remnant of the insurrection will disappear within 
sixty days by the surrender of the leader and the fading 
out of the rank and file." 

On this point, listen to the following letter very recently 
written by a young Virginia soldier in the Philippines to 
his parents: ''The anti-expansionists at home have simply 
ruined all prospects of any probable termination of troubles 
here, at least until after the election. They have discour- 
aged our men and encouraged our enemies. Even admit- 
ting soundness in their views, they are guilty of the highest 
treason, and hundreds of deaths must of necessity be laid 
at their door. The natives have the greatest confidence in 
Bryan, and they don't hesitate to tell us that as soon as 
he is elected the soldiers will all be sent away and they 
will run things to suit themselves. 

"I was down at Calamba a few days ago and saw a large 
picture of Bryan stuck on a native's hut. They all firmly 
believe he will be elected in November, and they also believe 
that the anti-expansionists are largely in the majority in 
the United States. The natives have always been accus- 
tomed to living under a most despotic form of government, 
and for any one to criticise or disagree with the methods 
of the reigning powers meant no less than instant death and 
confiscation of all property, and so they reason that if 
Bryan's party was not stronger than the reigning power in 
the United States it would be impossible for the party 
to exist. 



A POLITICAL ADDRESS 259 

"It makes me weary every time I see in one of the papers 
from the States where some 'anti' is shooting off his head 
about these poor down-trodden people over here, and how 
they are being imposed upon by the Americans, and yet 
these people who are doing all the talking don't know any 
more about the condition of affairs in the islands than I 
do about preaching a sermon. In the first place, they are 
better off now than they ever were in their lives before, 
have m.ore liberty and more to eat, and are making more 
money. The natives make in a day now more than they 
made in a week before. When farmers raise a crop, as 
they do now, they do not give half of it to the church 
and the other half to the government, as they did formerly, 
and starve themselves. They can carry their goods to mar- 
ket and not be robbed before they get there by ladrones. 

**The majority of us will be glad when we can return 
to civil life. We are all tired of it, but we can not leave 
until there is a change in the situation. In the meantime 
we need encouragement, instead of being branded as mur- 
derers, robbers, and desperadoes. I don't believe you will 
find a man in the service here who would be willing to give 
up the islands. It keeps a fellow guessing. I don't know 
what to make of it. I have been a Democrat all my life 
and was always a great admirer of Mr. Bryan, but I can 
not for the life of me see how a man can conscientiously 
be a follower of Bryan and fight under the stars and stripes 
at the same time." 

Very strong testimony in support of our accusation 
against Mr. Bryan is the following extract from a letter 
from a Filipino to Aguinaldo, and found among Aguinaldo's 
papers captured by us. It counsels Aguinaldo to peace, 
and says : "We are in error, and yet we persist in that 
error, impelled by those who dream of a triumph of a party 
which is today in the minority in the United States, without 



260 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 

perceiving that this party is also American, and that they 
are not going to give us our independence out of hand as 
a matter of sentiment at the expense of the honor of 
America, and in spite of the grave responsibility, both 
international and domestic, contracted under the treaty of 
Paris. Others dream that because part of the press of 
Europe copies from the American anti-imperialist papers 
the criticisms of that party against the government of 
President McKinley, a European intervention in our favor 
is to take place, without reflecting that the treaty of Paris 
was made before all the civilized world, and with its assent." 

Here is a note of honor that Mr. Bryan seems to have 
missed. We have solemnly by treaty guaranteed to the 
Spanish subjects remaining in the Philippines protection in 
their property, their business, their persons, and their 
religion. 

Suppose we turn over these islands to Aguinaldo, as we 
must under the Bryan theory, if he and his followers refuse 
their consent to any government we may establish, and it 
is a certainty that he will never consent, will the man who 
attempted to massacre these people while we were in Manila 
forego his butchery after we have departed? Verily, Carl 
Schurz was right in saying in 1896 that the election of 
Bryan would be at the price of national honor, which has 
never been forfeited. All our promises are equally bind- 
ing, whether contained in a bond or a treaty. The man 
who would disregard one would disregard the other. Bryan 
would disregard both. He will never have an opportunity 
to disregard either. 

In his Indianapolis speech, Mr. Bryan said: ''The Repub- 
lican party today is responsible for every drop of blood 
drawn from an American soldier in the Philippine Islands 
or drawn by an American soldier." 



A POLITICAL ADDRESS 261 

In these distant islands, not many months ago, there 
died on the firing-line at the head of his troops, as brilliant, 
as gallant a soldier, as brave a man, as true a patriot as 
ever a nation called a hero, and this people and genera- 
tions yet unborn will honor the fame and name of Lawton. 
This is what he said a few days before he was killed on 
the field of battle by a Filipino bullet : "If I am shot by 
a Filipino bullet, it might as well come from one of my 
own men, because I know that the continuance of fighting 
here is due to reports sent out from America." 

Who tells the truth, the man at the front or the man in 
the rear? 

Which will the American people believe? The man who 
gave his life for his country, or the man who gives only 
his jaw, and cares not how many of our soldiers' lives are 
sacrificed upon the altar of his selfish ambition? 

I would commend to his thoughtful consideration the 
following statement made by the New York Journal before 
the ratification of the treaty: 

"President McKinley's proclamation to the people of the 
Philippines through General Otis ought to secure their 
hearty cooperation in our work of regeneration. The Presi- 
dent promises them all they hoped to win in their revolt 
against Spain. President McKinley promises that civil and 
municipal government shall be carried on as far as prac- 
ticable by officers chosen from the inhabitants of the 
islands, and if, in performing this work of civilization, 
American blood should be shed, the position of our anti- 
expansionists would not be enviable. The first shot fired 
against the American flag would make domestic opposition 
to the measures of our government overt treason." 

Think of that, Mr. Bryan! 

Mr. Bryan is very fond of quoting from the speeches of 
Abraham Lincoln. I would suggest to him that when he 



262 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 

calls the suppression of the Filipino insurrection an unholy 
and unjust war, knowing that his words will reach alike 
the ear of the Filipino rebel and of the American soldier, 
as they scan each other along the barrels of their loaded 
rifles, he recall the following appropriate remarks of Abra- 
ham Lincoln, aimed at such orators as he: 

"He who dissuades one man from volunteering, and 
induces one soldier to desert, weakens the cause as much 
as he who kills an American soldier in battle. Must I shoot 
a simple-minded soldier-boy who deserts, while I must not 
touch a hair of a wily agitator, who induces him to desert? 
This is none the less injurious when effected by getting a 
father, a mother, or friend into a public meeting and there 
working upon his feelings till he is persuaded to write the 
soldier-boy that he is fighting in a bad cause for a wicked 
administration of a contemptible government. I think that, 
in such a case, to silence the agitator and save the boy is 
not only constitutional, but withal a great mercy." 

Senator Pettigrew, of South Dakota, has been a very 
bitter opponent of the President in his Philippine policy, 
and is now an advocate of Bryan's election and his own. 
One of these fathers to whom Lincoln referred recently 
wrote the following letter to the Senator, in reply to his 
appeal for aid in this campaign. I commend this letter 
to Mr. Bryan's consideration. It is as follows: 

"You ask for the active assistance of your friends to over- 
come the efforts of the Republicans to defeat you. Your 
friends are mostly in the islands of Luzon, and one of my 
sons is now suffering from the tortures of a Mauser bullet 
sent into his chest by one of them. Your boasted friends 
are the enemies of our country, and are thriving on the 
encouragement and support derived from you as Senator 
from South Dakota. I had two sons in the Philippine 
rebellion, and your political consort, Judge Moore, prayed 



A POLITICAL ADDRESS 263 

that the god of battles would strengthen the arms of their 
opponents that they might drive these sons and their com- 
rades into the sea. This sentiment you have countenanced 
and encouraged by your every public act, and it is because 
of your having thus countenanced and encouraged such 
treason that the rebellion in the Philippines still hangs on." 

I commend to these battle-scarred sons and to their 
fathers and mothers the following slur upon the American 
soldiers recently uttered by Mr. Bryan. In a recent speech 
at Chicago Mr. Bryan is reported to have spoken as fol- 
lows: *Tf 100,000 soldiers are permitted to walk about in 
idleness where one soldier would do, what are we com- 
ing to?" 

The fact is that of these 100,000 soldiers one-third are 
regulars and the remaining two-thirds are practically volun- 
teers whose enlistment is only for one year longer. Have 
they been or are they now walking about in idleness where 
one soldier would do? Have General Wood and his men 
been idle in Cuba? Were Otis and Lawton and Funston 
and MacArthur and their brave boys idle in Luzon? Were 
Liscum and the Ninth Infantry idle at Tien-Tsin? Has 
Chaffee been idling away his time on a pleasure trip from 
Tien-Tsin to Pekin? 

Is it harder work to lecture at Chautauqua clubs, talk 
at country fairs, and orate from the rear end of a Pullman 
car than to cleanse the Cuban Augean stable of the accumu- 
lated filth of centuries of Spanish misrule, and fight yellow 
fever? Is it pleasanter to listen to the whiz of a Mauser 
bullet than to the applause of a listening throng? Is it 
as dangerous and exhausting to make a political campaign 
as, beneath a tropic sun or in tropic rains, in dust and 
mud, climbing mountains and fording rivers, to face death 
in open battle or secret ambush or in slow, wasting fever 
that our country's flag may be victorious in our distant 



264 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 

possessions, that our country's ambassador may be rescued 
from ignominious death? Are the graves of our soldiers 
in Cuba, Luzon, and China the resting places of men who 
died walking about in idleness? 

" 'Walking around in idleness,' 
Wherever the flag is assailed, 
Meeting the foe with idle might 

That never yet has failed. 
Lawton, and Lisciim, and Logan, too, 

Capron — the list is long — 
Went to their death in 'idleness,' 
And their 'idleness' was wrong. 

"Grant and Sherman and Sheridan — 

Why should we call the roll? 
They idled away in the idle fight — 

In fights that stirred the soul. 
'Walking round in idleness,' 

Braving the leaden hail; 
What is the glow of a nation's pride? 

Is that but an idle tale? 

" 'Walking around in idleness,' 

Over the Pekin road; 
Scorched and worn by the galling sun, 

Lugging an idle load. 
Fighting with idle energy. 

Cheering with idle breath — 
Thinking, with idle love, of home, 

And dying with idle death." 

Verily, he jests at scars who never felt a wound. Let 
every American resent this slur upon the nation's heroes. 

Mr. Bryan, in quoting very often from speeches of Abra- 
ham Lincoln, would make it appear that he is attempting 
to follow in the footsteps of the martyred President. In 
this regard President McKinley very pertinently says: "If 
our opponents would practice as well as preach the doc- 



A POLITICAL ADDRESS 265 

Irines of Abraham Lincoln, there would be no fear for the 
r-afety of our institutions at home or their rightful influence 
in any territory over which our flag floats." In this regard 
Prt-irident McKinley can very appropriately refer Mr. Bryan 
to Lincoln's first inaugural address, wherein he said : "The 
power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and 
possess the property and places belonging to the govern- 
ment." Bryan's footsteps point in an opposite direction. 
He has pledged himself, if elected, to call an extra session 
of Congress to give up some of the territory of the United 
States. But Mr. Bryan does not preach the doctrines of 
Lincoln. He garbles Lincoln's utterances and gives them 
a meaning Lincoln never intended, and therefore I do not 
think him honest. In his quotation from Lincoln in his 
Labor Day speech at Chicago, he made it appear that Lin- 
coln apprehended that an attempt would be made to place 
the dollar above the man, and that thereby the liberties 
of the people would be destroyed by capital. The quotation 
reads as if taken bodily from Lincoln's first annual message 
to Congress. Instead, it is made up of disconnected sen- 
tences taken here and there from a message that was dis- 
cussing the monarchial tendencies of the slave States, was 
contrasting the slave labor in the South and the hired 
laborer in the North, the hopelessness of the former and 
the independence and helpfulness of the latter, but which 
in no way was colored by such demoralizing rhetoric as 
that which Bryan attempted to give it. 

Lincoln was the last man to attempt to mount ambition's 
ladder upon rungs made of class dissension and internecine 
strife. He recognized the catholicity of labor, the respect 
due to honest toil, the independence of labor and capital, 
the protection due to employer and employee alike, and he 
voiced this sentiment in that part of this message which 
Mr. Bryan omitted to quote. He said: "Labor is prior to 



266 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 

and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of 
labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first 
existed. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much 
the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are 
as worthy of protection as other rights." 

Lincoln was essentially a man of the people, and his 
great human heart had room in it for all his countrymen, 
rich and poor alike, and his mission was to sow far and wide 
with liberal hand the seeds of fellowship and brotherhood, 
and not of envy, hatred, and uncharitableness. 

Mr. Bryan was therefore dishonest in so using Lincoln's 
great name to fan the flame of discord between wage-earners 
and wage-payers. This dishonesty was again apparent in 
a subsequent speech wherein he said: "If he is a wage- 
earner, and you do not know how soon he may be even if 
he is not now, is he safe when he is liable to be deprived 
of trial by jury through the system known as government 
by injunction?" 

Mr. Bryan is a lawyer. He knows the constitution of 
the United States and of every State. He knows that the 
right of trial by jury is guaranteed in every constitution 
drawn by the Anglo-Saxon race since Magna Charta, and 
that no human power desires to or can take it away from 
the humblest pauper that begs for alms upon our public 
streets. 

He knows that no man under the American government 
is liable to be deprived of trial by jury through govern- 
ment by injunction, or by anything else except by the 
anarchy he, Bryan, is inciting. He knows the province of 
the writ of injunction, to wit : to prevent the doing or con- 
tinuing of an act that would cause damage that no court 
of law in its usual course can redress, such as the infringe- 
ment of a patent right, of a copyright, of a trade-mark, 
the polluting or shutting off of water, the commission of 



A POLITICAL ADDRESS 267 

waste, the conspiring of tradesmen or manufacturers or rail- 
roads in violation of the interstate commerce act, or of 
striking laborers to prevent by force commerce by rail 
between the States or the transportation of the mails. He 
knows that this preventative remedy has been applied alike 
to employer and employee, that it broke up the combination 
of railroads to control traffic between the Missouri and the 
Pacific, and the combination of coal dealers in this city 
to keep up the price of coal, as well as the combination 
of Debs and his associates to stop the running of trains. 
He knows that it is a contempt of court to disobey its writs, 
whether of injunction or otherwise; that courts must have 
the summary power to mete out immediate punishment for 
such disobedience; that without such power courts might 
as well close their doors and the judicial ermine give place 
to the red coat of anarchy, the wool-sack to the guillotine. 
He knows that the railroad officials and coal dealers would 
have been punished by fine and imprisonment if they had 
disobeyed the injunctions issued against them. He knows 
that the striking workingmen denied the mandates of the 
courts and were punished solely for such disobedience, as 
the courts have done under the wisest judges since English 
law was known; and he knows that such punishments have 
not in the least impaired to any man the right of trial 
by jury. 

I say, therefore, that in the above utterance he was dis- 
honest with the people, and sowed the wind from w^hich 
they may reap the whirlwind, and therein he wandered as 
far from the path that Lincoln trod as did the path of 
Robespierre diverge from that of Washington. 

It is not improbable that Mr. Bryan, owing to his appar- 
ent familiarity with the career of Lincoln, has copied his 
diatribes against McKinley from those uttered in 1864 
against Lincoln. The same charges of imperialism that 



268 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 

are now made against McKinley were then made against 
Lincoln. The Indianapolis Sentinel, that is now attacking 
McKinley, attacked Lincoln in 1864, as follows: 

"Shall we profit by the teachings of history, and even 
by our own experience, or continue a policy that must end 
in the overthrow of one of the best governments that the 
world ever saw, and of civil liberty? . . . Have not the 
people daily evidence that Abraham Lincoln is assuming 
despotic power? More than eighteen hundred years ago 
Rome was governed by three men at the end of that repub- 
lic. One was Caesar. They were all of noble blood. And 
we, too, have our triumvirate — Lincoln, Stanton, Halleck. 
Should Mr. Lincoln be re-elected, the revolution will be 
accomplished. This will be no longer a republic of the 
United States, but a consolidated empire." 

In 1864 the Democratic national platform proclaimed 
that during Lincoln's first administration, under the pretense 
of a military necessity of a war power higher than the 
constitution, the constitution itself had been disregarded in 
every part, and public liberty and private rights alike trod- 
den down. 

These charges were made all over the North, and yet, 
notwithstanding, Lincoln was re-elected, the union was 
saved, constitutional liberty was sustained and strength- 
ened, and Lincoln's name became a household word, his 
statues in marble or bronze grace every city in the land, 
and his fame is and ever will be enshrined in the hearts 
of his countrymen as one of their most priceless heritages. 

In 1868 the Democratic national platform contained the 
startling accusation against the Republican party that under 
its repeated assaults the pillars of the government are rock- 
ing on their base, and, should it succeed in November 
next and inaugurate its President, we will meet as a sub- 



A POLITICAL ADDRESS 269 

ject and conquered people amid the ruins of liberty and 
the scattered fragments of the constitution. 

General Grant was the President here referred to. The 
people of the North knew that he had been the battering- 
ram that had demolished the wall the South had built to 
divide the Union. The people of the South knew that he 
was as noble toward a conquered foe as he was great as an 
opposing one. The people of the entire country, therefore, 
notwithstanding this prophecy, twice elected and inaugurated 
as their President the hero of Appomattox. Then came 
Hays and Garfield and Cleveland and Harrison and Cleve- 
land again and McKinley, and we have not yet met "as 
a subject and conquered people amid the ruins of liberty 
and the scattered fragments of the constitution," but are, 
on the contrary, giving liberty and good government, law, 
order, and protection to those who for centuries have them- 
selves been subject and conquered people. 

I would suggest to Mr. Bryan that when he talks of 
this people losing their liberties, he add to his quotations 
from Lincoln the following remark of Lincoln's : "There 
is no fear of the people losing their liberties. We all know 
ihat to be the cry of demagogues, and none but the ignorant 
will listen to it." 

This cry of imperialism is purely a bogey man that should 
scare no man. Not a thing done in Cuba, Porto Rico, or 
the Philippines is in any way imperialistic. Vast powers 
have been necessarily exercised by the President in all of 
these islands, and yet a great Democratic leader. Senator 
Morgan, recently said of him : 

"His conduct in the government of our newly acquired 
insular possessions does not justify the suspicion that, per- 
sonally, he demands these vast powers for his own aggran- 
dizement or for any imperial purpose. His conduct in the 
exercise of almost imperial sway in these islands has estab- 



270 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 

lished before the whole world the great fact that an Amer- 
ican President, inspired with the self-control and self- 
abnegation which is enjoined by our constitution and is 
taught by the spirit of our government, is superior to the 
temptations of unlawful and unhallowed ambitions." 

This encomium on McKinley is not only true of him 
today, but will also be true of him four years from now, 
when he is nearing the close of his second presidential term. 

In short, if it be imperialism to favor territorial expan- 
sion, then imperialism has been characteristic of every Pres- 
ident who by conquest or treaty has expanded our domain 
from the Mississippi to the Golden Gate and from the Rio 
Grande to Alaska. It includes among its votaries Jefferson 
and Jackson, Adams and Monroe, Polk and Pierce, Andrew 
Johnson, who brought beneath our flag the land that is lit 
by the aurora borealis, and Ulysses S. Grant, who would 
have illuminated our galaxy of stars with the Southern 
Cross that brightens the skies o'er San Domingo. 

There is nothing new, much less imperialistic, in any of 
the events that have followed upon our war with Spain. 

From the moment when the Puritans landed upon Plym- 
outh Rock to the ratification of the treaty of Paris w^e have 
never asked the consent of the people of any territory that 
we have acquired, whether by purchase or conquest. Our 
own government was not established by the consent of all 
the governed. The colonists came with patents to lands 
that made no mention of the inhabitants thereof, and whom 
they did not consult, except at the point of a dagger or 
over the barrel of a gun. These colonists in the course of 
time established this government and adopted this consti- 
tution, announcing a Declaration of Independence that pro- 
claimed that governments derive their powers from the 
consent of the governed, and yet they did not permit the 
Indians and negroes, both free and slave, or those who 



A POLITICAL ADDRESS 271 

were disqualified by poverty from voting, constituting alto- 
gether one-fourth of the population, to give or refuse their 
consent, any more than the Southern people today give the 
disfranchised negro a voice in the government, although 
they applaud to the skies Bryan's rodomontados against 
McKinley for governing the Filipinos without their consent. 

After the formation of the union several of the States 
ceded to the Federal government what is known as the 
"Northwest Territory," and which now constitutes the States 
of Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana. As 
the ceding States had never obtained the consent of the 
natives to be governed by them, they did not consult them 
in giving them a new ruler. 

Rogers and Clark conquered for us the Illinois country 
and carried our boundaries to the Mississippi on the west 
and the Great Lakes on the north, but we did not ask the 
consent of the French inhabitants of that region. 

The next, and the greatest of all our expansions, was 
the Louisiana purchase. There is no word in the treaty 
about the consent of the governed, nor in the resolutions 
of Congress which gave Jefferson the power to rule over 
the vast region, nor in the act organizing the territorial 
government, which was to be the creation of the executive 
power. Yet there were 30,000 white men settled at the 
mouth of the Mississippi and in its neighborhood who had 
no good will to this government, and whose rights were 
never consulted at all by the nations which decided their 
fate, and who protested against the government imposed 
upon them. 

A few years passed, and, in 1819, we bought Florida 
from Spain without the consent of the governed, and this 
crime against the Declaration of Independence was perpe- 
trated by John Quincy Adams and James Monroe. 



272 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 

Next came Texas. Was the consent of the Mexicans 
who lived in that great region asked by us or any one? 
Then came the Mexican War and the treaty of Guadalupe- 
Hidalgo, whereby we acquired New Mexico, California, and 
Arizona. There were many Mexicans within this territory. 
We never asked their consent. On the contrary, they made 
bloody opposition. There was an insurrection in New Mex- 
ico in which many officials, including the governor, were 
massacred, and there were some small fights in California, 
but we put them down with the sword. 

Next came the Gadsden purchase of 45,000 square miles, 
whereby we bought territory with the people on it, and 
nobody was consulted except the governments of the United 
States and Mexico. 

Next came the purchase of Alaska with the people in it, 
and it never occurred to any one to ask their consent. Jef- 
ferson, Monroe, Polk, Pierce, and Andrew Jackson were 
the Democratic Presidents who were guilty of imperialism, 
as defined by Mr. Bryan, in acquiring these lands without 
consulting the inhabitants thereof. 

We might ask the shades of these Democratic Presidents 
in the language of Mr. Bryan's Indianapolis speech: ''Did 
we purchase the people? If not, did we secure title for 
them? Were they thrown in with the land?" They would 
refer us for answer to the Supreme Court of the United 
States, which has said that "On the transfer of territory 
by treaty the relations of the inhabitants with their former 
sovereign are dissolved, and new relations are created 
between them and the government which has acquired their 
territory. The same act which transfers their country trans- 
fers the allegiance of those who remain in it." 

Mr. Bryan knows this to be settled law, and his state- 
ment, therefore, was another instance in which he was dis- 
honest with the American people. 



A POLITICAL ADDRESS 273 

Democratic Presidents not only annexed contiguous ter- 
ritory, but they endeavored to acquire non-contiguous terri- 
tory. Jefferson wanted Cuba; Polk undertook to annex it, 
and offered Spain $100,000,000 for it; Pierce was willing 
to add $30,000,000 to this; Buchanan three times recom- 
mended to Congress its acquisition; and the Democratic 
conventions of 1860 resolved in favor of its annexation, 
but nothing was said by these officials in their letters or 
messages about the people of Cuba, or about their wishes, 
or whether its acquisition would be by the "consent of the 
governed." 

Andrew Jackson negotiated a treaty with Denmark for 
the cession of the Danish West Indies, and, before him, 
President Pierce negotiated a treaty with the King of the 
Hawaiian Islands for their acquisition, but objected to the 
acceptance of the Hawaiian Territory coupled with any 
agreement which would require its admission as a State of 
the Union, an objection that would shock the modern 
Democrat. 

The Democrats of the past not only annexed every foot 
of the terirtory that we have annexed on this continent, 
and attempted to annex non-contiguous territory without 
consulting the inhabitants thereof, but they also governed 
these people without obtaining their consent and independ- 
ently of the constitution. 

In 1803, in providing for the government of the Louisiana 
Territory, Congress vested all military, civil, and judicial 
powers in such person or persons, and to be exercised in 
such manner as the President of the United States should 
direct, and Jefferson exercised this power in accordance 
with the general principles of the constitution; but there 
was no consultation with the inhabitants, no participation 
in their government accorded them, and no rights assured 
to them except "the free enjoyment of their liberty, prop- 



274 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 

erty, and religion," For this Jefferson was called an "impe- 
rialist" and accused of establishing a despotic government. 

In 1819 Congress vested the same power in President 
Monroe, and he acted as Jefferson did. 

But, say the Bryanites, "We acquired all our previous 
territory with the intention to occupy the soil with our 
own people and eventually to admit it into the Union as a 
State. 

New Mexico and Arizona were acquired in 1848 with 
a promise of statehood, and this promise has not yet been 
kept, though over fifty years have gone by. Alaska was 
acquired in 1867 under no such promise, and she has just 
obtained local government. Its admission as a territory, 
and the admission of Arizona and New Mexico as States, 
depend solely upon the will of Congress. In the meantime 
we have given Porto Rico a more independent government 
than we even gave to any of the territories. We have 
treated them more generously. The other territories we 
tax to support a government in which they are denied 
representation. To Porto Rico we have given every dol- 
lar we have taken by tariff or taxation, and we are 
ready to treat the Philippines in the same manner. But, 
independent of all this, what is the difference in principle 
between imposing government upon New Mexico against 
the consent of the people and treating the Filipinos in the 
same way? Did the fact that we intended to occupy New 
Mexico with our own people, and that we expected in due 
course of time to admit it into the Union, justify us in impos- 
ing upon the New Mexicans a government against which 
they rebelled, if all governments derive their just powers 
only from the consent of the governed? Has the fact that 
we did not so treat them, that we put down their rebellion 
with the sword, that after a lapse of over half a century 
we have not kept our promise as to statehood, imperialized 



A POLITICAL ADDRESS 275 

our government? Is there a single fundamental principle 
of our constitution, except trial by jury, that we have not 
extended to both Porto Rico and the Philippines? There 
is none. There is no distinction in our conduct in the two 
acquisitions. The policy we adopted at the start we still 
continue. 

This policy now condemned by William Jennings Bryan 
as imperialism was inaugurated by the men who made the 
constitution — by Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of 
Independence. These men were practical men. They knew 
that no popular government can stand long or accomplish 
much for the good of the governed that is not carefully 
adjusted to the conditions and intelligence of the people 
who are to live under it. They therefore acquired terri- 
tory without consulting the inhabitants, and gave them that 
government that in their opinion was best suited for their 
needs, never stopping to ask how far the government so 
created derived its just powers from the consent of the 
governed. They met the conditions that confronted them, 
and their justification is the government they bequeathed 
to us. 

We must follow the same common-sense policy. In deter- 
mining the question as to the form of government to be 
given to the people of Porto Rico and the Philippines we 
must bear in mind that the vast majority of them are 
unable to read or write ', that they have no experience in 
any real self-government or any really honest government, 
but have been for centuries under the dominion of arbitrary 
power ; that in all their experience and traditions law and 
freedom have been ideas which were not associated with 
each other, but opposed to each other. We must bear in 
mind that a people who are in this condition, who have 
never acquired any real understanding of the way to con- 
duct a popular government, who have never learned the 



276 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 

fundamental and essential lesson of obedience to the deci- 
sion of the majority, would lapse into anarchy or fall under 
an oligarchy if intrusted now with self-government. We 
would be committing a crime, an outrage upon these peo- 
ple, and upon the civilized world, we would be recreant to 
our trust, if we did not train these people in the art of 
government before allowing them to govern themselves. 

The people of these islands have acquired the moral right 
to be treated by the United States in accordance with the 
underlying principles of justice and freedom which we have 
declared in our constitution, and which are the essential 
safeguards of every individual against the powers of any 
government, because they are essential limitations inherent 
in the very existence of our government. "They are enti- 
tled to demand that they shall not be deprived of life, 
liberty, or property without due process of law, that pri- 
vate property shall not be taken for public use without com- 
pensation, that no law shall be passed impairing the obliga- 
tion of contracts or freedom of religious worship, that all 
men shall be equal before the law, because there is an 
implied contract between our government and every one 
under its dominion that these rights shall be respected and 
enforced, because observance of them is a part of the nature 
of our government." I do not think that any of you doubt 
but that Congress, in the exercise of its constitutional 
power to make all needful rules and regulations respecting 
the territory belonging to the United States, will hold itself 
sacredly bound by these limitations. 

It will take time to eradicate from our island possessions 
the evil effects of centuries of Spanish misrule. For some 
time we must in the Philippines sustain the law with visible 
force until confidence is bred of justice, and the husband- 
man learns that he will reap what he sows, unmolested by 
native brigand or governmental bandit. This will require 



A POLITICAL ADDRESS 277 

a standing army. A great hue and cry is raised against a 
large standing army, and from the pages of history are 
culled the bloody records that standing armies have 
imprinted there of their onslaughts upon the lives and lib- 
erties of the people. History, like the Bible, can be used 
to prove any crime or virtue that human fears and hopes 
may conceive. But history is an incomplete and inaccurate 
narrative even of the past. It tells nothing of the living 
present. It is for today and tomorrow that we are now 
planning and legislating. The people of this century and 
the next are to produce the soldiers of our army. This 
army will be of the same warp and woof as the people 
whom it is feared they will oppress. They will be American 
citizens, as an American does not cease to be an American 
citizen when he becomes an American soldier. Does any 
one seriously believe that from the common schools of this 
country there can be enlisted an army from whom any 
miltary system, life, or discipline can eradicate that intelli- 
gence, manhood, independence, and love of liberty that has 
made the United States the land of the free? Does any 
one believe that the people that dared in their infancy to 
battle with England and wrested from her unwilling hands 
independence and sovereignty, that has extended the bound- 
aries of this republic from the Atlantic to the Pacific across 
arid plains, over snowclad mountains, and in the face of 
hostile savages, that stopped not at ocean's bounds, but 
brought within our domain islands in the sunset sea, that 
fought and won the War of the Rebellion, and the war 
with Spain, that has built up this government as a tower 
of strength for struggling humanity, from whose summit 
liberty lights the world, that has planted a school-house 
upon every hill and on each school-house unfurled its flag — 
does any one believe that the descendants of those who 
fought at Bunker Hill, or Gettysburg, or Santiago have 



278 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 

aught to fear for their liberties from a standing army organ- 
ized in our midst? If there be such a man, then I pity 
him, and I would not trust him on the firing line. Be 
assured, therefore, my fellow-citizens, that in your Philip- 
pine policy you have not wandered away from the paths 
your fathers trod, that your government has not changed 
from a republic to an empire, that the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence is today as much as ever your guiding cloud by 
day and pillar of fire by night. In acquiring and govern- 
ing the Philippines you follow the example not only of 
the men who founded this republic, but also of those who 
saved it. The Southern States attempted to break up this 
Union. They withdrew their consent to be governed by 
the Union. They wanted to sacrifice the Union to save 
slavery. Upon the principle that all governments derive 
their just powers from the consent of the governed they 
based their right to secede. The Federal government deter- 
mined to preserve the Union, to sacrifice slavery to save 
the Union, to keep the Union intact with or without their 
consent. Thanks be to the God of our country that this 
was said and done, and that no mere declaration of words 
was allowed to break up this greatest of nations. 

And no mere declaration of words is going to induce 
this country to believe that all our Presidents from Wash- 
ington to McKinley have been imperialists, and that Bryan 
is our promised Messiah. No mere declaration of words 
is going to induce us to become the Don Quixote of the 
nations instead of the benefactor of mankind, to substi- 
tute Aguinaldo for McKinley in the regeneration of the 
Philippine Islands. The American people have for over 
a century been growing in power and wealth and right- 
eousness. They have expanded in territory, increased in 
wealth, multiplied in numbers, developed in power, and 



A POLITICAL ADDRESS 279 

held fast to popular government. Ever vigilant and watch- 
ful of their own interests, they have poured out their blood 
and treasure in defense of the rights of others. I do not 
believe that all of a sudden, in the twinkling of an eye, 
they have changed in character, purpose, ambition, courage, 
and determination. I do not believe that a people who 
began a war to rescue the Cubans from oppression can end 
it by oppressing the Filipinos. I do not believe that we 
will establish in the Philippines a government different in 
principle from our own, though different in form. 

I believe that we will show them how to govern under 
law, that we will teach them that office is a public trust, 
power a shield for justice and not a weapon of personal 
prowess, and public moneys a means of public benefaction 
and not of personal aggrandizement. I believe that under 
the aegis of our flag law and order will drive out anarchy 
and brigandage, industry and education eradicate vagabond- 
age and illiteracy, sanitation drive out disease, and that 
from the acorn of American civilization sown by us in these 
islands there will grow a mighty oak of self-government, 
whose branches will shelter them and their descendants 
henceforth and forever. 

I believe that, as President McKinley has said, we will 
by our treatment of the Filipinos lead them to feel that it 
is their liberty and not our power, their welfare and not 
our gain, that we seek to enhance, and that, as our flag 
has never waved over any community save in blessing, they 
will acknowledge that it has not lost the gift of benedic- 
tion by its world-wide journey to their shores. 

Owing in a large measure, as we have seen, to the policy 
of the Republican party, our people are prosperous, and 
there is work for all that seek employment. Our farmers 
are paying their mortgages and capital finds ready invest- 
ment. Our flag is respected at home and abroad. And 



280 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 

yet, at this moment of prosperity, we stand at the parting 
of the ways. We have arrived at man's estate. What shall 
our manhood be? Shall we choose the road that leads to 
the uplands, that will utilize our manhood and make it 
great and glorious, or shall we select that path whose down 
grade needs neither struggle nor courage to travel, and 
whose terminal is the lowland of sloth and decay? Upon 
this choice depends the history of our next century. 

Under the continued wise leadership of William McKin- 
ley we will choose the right path. He is one of the three 
great presidents whose names will be remembered through- 
out all time, and whose administrations will mark the three 
great epochs in the history of this nation. 

Washington brought order out of chaos, united the dis- 
united pioneers of freedom, and laid plumb and true the 
corner-stone of the grandest political edifice ever reared by 
the hand of man, this temple of liberty sheltering for all 
time government of the people, by the people, and for the 
people. 

Lincoln unlocked the manacles of the slave, made the 
bondman free, and cemented these diverse sovereignties into 
a union one and indivisible, now and forever. 

McKinley loosed the American eagle that it might wing 
its flight and drive the Spanish vulture from the islands 
of the sea, opened the door through which this nation will 
march to a grandeur yet unknown, and proclaimed to the 
listening nations that the United States has its rightful 
place on the right of the line of the world powers, and that 
its flag, alike in the Orient and the Occident — its red, white, 
and blue flashing equally in the light of the setting and 
the rising sun — means everywhere the lightening of men's 
burdens, the lifting up of God's people. 

It is said of McKinley, as it was said of Lincoln, that 
he holds his ear close to the ground, keeping step to the 



A POLITICAL ADDRESS 281 

rhythm of the people's tread. This is a grand rhythm, 
second to none but that to which the stars keep time; it is 
the rhythm of every national anthem that e'er led warring 
hosts to battle or moved them to praise and thanksgiving. 
Inspired by its music, Lincoln saved the Union, leaving at 
his death one flag floating over the United States. Inspired 
by its music, McKinley enlarged this nation, maintained 
its flag in distant lands where fate and valor planted it, 
and boldly and confidently asks, "Who shall haul it down?" 

Neither individuals nor nations can live to themselves 
alone. We are our brothers' keepers. This nation in the 
great plans of the Almighty, in the economy of mankind, 
has its duty to perform in the working out of civilization. 
For its part of this great task it has been its whole life 
preparing. On May 1, 1898, its hour was at hand, and 
in prophetic ink in the sibylline book of fate it had long 
been written what it then should do. As a drop of rain 
starts but does not create the life lying dormant in the grain 
of wheat, as a flash of lightning reveals but does ont produce 
the visions of the night, so the battle of Manila did not 
itself create a new burden nor impose a new responsibility. 
They had been for years preparing, and the flash of Dewey's 
guns simply revealed them. 

Destiny works in a mysterious way its wonders to perform, 
and rarely reveals in advance what is forging in the work- 
shop of fate. Behind the curtain of the future tomorrow 
waits, holding in its hands the unexpected and the inevit- 
able, towards which the unerring and irresistible magnet of 
fate hurries the nations. This nation did not anticipate 
the outcome of its war with Spain. The Antilles and not 
the Philippines centered its attention. The liberating of 
the Cubans and not the civilizing of the Filipinos was 
the duty we undertook, the burden we assumed. 

Likewise, neither Washington, Lincoln, nor McKinley 



282 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 

anticipated the great things they were to do nor the respon- 
sibilities they were to assume, nor did they dream of the 
opportunities that were to knock at their doors. But each 
one proved himself to be a well-chosen child of destiny 
in being equal to his opportunity when it came, to be a 
"man of mighty days," and equal to the days. 

My fellow-citizens, I believe that we will be true to our 
traditions, ever watchful of our liberties and of the rights 
of others committed to our care, loyal to our flag and all 
that it represents. I am confident that in the future we 
will not change in sturdiness of character or uprightness 
of purpose, but will continue to grow in wealth and power 
so that as our tasks so shall our strength be, and that we 
will ever be a light set upon a hill, an exemplar and a 
leader among the nations. 

I believe that we will be equal to our new opportunities, 
that we will do our duty in this new sphere of national 
and international life in which it has pleased God to place 
us, and that, under the leadership of William McKinley, 
we will continue in our new career with no uncertain tread, 
meeting our new obligations as fearlessly, resolutely, and 
successfully as our revolutionary fathers met theirs when 
they founded this republic. 

Great nations must bear great burdens. This is what 
makes them great. Our nation did not consciously seek this 
Oriental burden. But we have this burden to bear, this 
responsibility to fulfill, this duty to perform. We have 
never shrunk from a danger, neglected an obligation, or 
failed in a task. We will not close this century with an 
act of cowardice or an admission of incompetency. 

Go to the polls and vote for McKinley. There can be 
and will be no imperialism, and so thinks every one who 
has confidence in the virtue, capacity, high purpose, and 
good faith of the American people. 

32 88 ^ 




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